


Old enchantment lingers in the honey-heart of earth

by lotesse



Category: Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander
Genre: Agriculture, Beltane, F/M, First Time, Magic-Users, Married Life, Monarchy, Poison, Political Alliances, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Restoration, Romance, Secrets, court intrigue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: “You – the pair of you – will soon need to be on your way north. Caer Dathyl now sits there ruined and empty, awaiting her renewer and king. And,” Dallben added, for the first time that day directing his entire attention toward Eilonwy, “her comforter and queen.”She shuddered at that, but tried to hide it from him, and from Taran.
Relationships: Eilonwy/Taran of Caer Dallben
Comments: 63
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

The clouds were rolling in over Avren Harbor, driven on a wind fresh from the sea and heavy yet with salt. Left behind, Eilonwy stood pale and tall on the river's shore, and shivered.

The boat's sails were still furled and covered against the stiffening breeze, but her oars were out, and she was pulling away from them, away toward the sea. 

Taran stood beside her, the back of his hand brushing the back of hers, but Eilonwy did not look at him. She felt as cold inside as a winter night, though it was early spring, and she thought she might shatter if she saw his face.

That morning, before the cavalcade of all their friends rode out and away forever, Dallben had pulled the two of them aside. His voice had been kind, jubilant, remote: as if he were gone already, as if he, or they, had become nothing more than figures in a finished story, near-forgotten. 

He had smiled most at her, but directed his speech toward Taran. It had been that way since she'd returned from Mona, and gone now were the long hours she remembered from her childhood when she would sit at his feet and listen to him talk, patient and interested in the enchanter's knowledge in a way that Taran never had been. Taran had been more wont to give confidences to Coll than to Dallben, waiting for the safety of shared work to bring out his questions and confessions. But Eilonwy had quickly warmed to the old man's abrasive character, finding that she enjoyed the feeling of being challenged by him, and that she learned well lessons given in his acerbic tongue.

That was all gone, now. In the quiet morning of Caer Dallben after the end of the war, Dallben hadn't been acerb at all; he was nearly glowing with fulfillment, replete with it. His task was done, and he was leaving them. He had charged them both with the care and stewardship of Caer Dallben, the maintenance of the farm, and she had watched Taran bend his neck for the yoke of that duty, quiet and sober. 

Then Dallben had said something worse: “But,” he'd said. 

She'd brought up her chin, and Taran's spine had snapped straight, at the iron in his tone. 

“You – the pair of you – will soon need to be on your way north. Caer Dathyl now sits there ruined and empty, awaiting her renewer and king. And,” he added, for the first time that day directing his entire attention toward Eilonwy, “her comforter and queen.” She'd shuddered at that, but tried to hide it from him, and from Taran.

Now, on the bank of the Avren, she took her courage into her mouth and looked up at the young man who had been her best friend, and who was now her handfasted spouse – all that she had left of the strange family that had raised her, that was now torn apart at the seams. Dallben and Fflewddur and Gurgi gone, and Gwydion, and Achren dead, and Coll dead, and the High King Math Son of Mathonwy dead. Even Hen would have to be left behind, when they left Caer Dallben. Only Taran was still there, his wrist brushing against hers in a gesture of respectful care, not crowding her but signaling his presence, ever stalwart, at her side.

Their eyes met. “You don't look much like a High King,” Eilonwy told him. 

It was true. Taran's hair was long and unkempt from months of travel and war, roughly tied back with a leathern cord, and his clothes were unwashed and stained and bore the marks of many mendings beside. 

Looking at him, she saw his face curiously doubled, at once war-hardened and boyishly unsure, worn with age and yet childishly vulnerable. She thought to herself, panicking a little: I know the boy, but it's the man I've gone and pledged my troth to.

“Eilonwy,” he said, and then stopped. At last he asked her, “What do you suggest I do, Princess?”

“I'm not a princess any more,” she told him.

He drew in a deep breath, shuddering on the inhale. His eyes were very dark. “I'm going to need all your sharpness,” he confessed to her. “I'm scared all the way through that I'm going to ruin everything.”

“Well,” she said, tart and brisk, breaking the wide silence that threatened to engulf them - “for tonight, at least, we have only to get ourselves home.”

*

In the open land that surrounded the farmstead of Caer Dallben, a multicolored and glorious encampment had been pitched. Bright banners waved from the top of tents in the freshening spring breeze. His subjects, Taran thought with an inward quaver, looking down on the expanse through the gathering dusk. They were his subjects, and they were waiting for him.

The encampment was in free revel. Smoit sat in the middle of it all, red-faced and wonderfully familiar, enthroned by a bonfire in the open air, and Taran left Eilonwy with the horses and went to him. 

“So you shall be king after all, my lad!” the red-bearded warrior roared, clapping Taran so heartily on the back that he nearly fell. “Can't think of a better man for the job, bedamned to anyone who says otherwise!”

“Your face is as long as a widow's tale, Wanderer,” Hevydd the Smith said to him from his seat near to Smoit's, they having evidently struck up alliance.

“Forgive me,” Taran asked them both. 

He looked up to see Eilonwy coming toward them across the cool dark sward, a cluster of snowdrops nodding down from where it had been tucked behind her ear, and blushed and hastily dropped his eyes again. The mixed anticipation and mourning in his heart made it beat strangely.

Hevydd laughed at him then. “You are new-married, boy. Go, and forge your new chain! And never forget that love is a chain: heavy and immutable, making two things one, binding broken links.”

“Come inside,” Eilonwy said. “You must be starving—I know that I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, and I'm not the one who was up all last night talking to enchantresses, or hags, or whatever they were.”

Enchantresses, he thought, Eilonwy's word ringing in his ears. She'd given up her enchantments for this. Did she feel different? She didn't seem changed to him, but - 

The night had drawn in around Caer Dallben, clear and cool and starry. Taran lit the beeswax tapers and banked the fire while Eilonwy saw to the animals and checked the gates and windows, and once again the familiar routine of the farmstead was a comfort and a crutch against the strange newness of their circumstances.

He heard the front door open and close, and then Eilonwy was standing before him, the shadows tangled in her bright hair. Her sky-blue kirtle hung unlaced and her shift tumbled off one shoulder to reveal her pale, freckled skin. 

He rose to his feet. His entire boyhood had been lost to love for her, and his youth, and if he had in some way won his way to manhood, that guerdon rested at her feet, for he’d clawed his way to wisdom for the sake of her smile.

“I used to pretend, sometimes,” Eilonwy said, “that this was our house, yours and mine. I was so happy, working here, knowing you were nearby. It used to make me want to sing while I scrubbed the pots and trenchers.”

She came close to him, moving into the circle of his arms, and then pressed close to him and closed her eyes. She let out a long breath, and he shivered and tightened his hold. “Oh, Taran. I'm so glad to be back with you again. I wish that Dallben had never sent me away, and that we were going on now from where we'd begun, without all the interruptions and misunderstandings and horrors in the middle.”

“It's so quiet,” he said. “It's so strange that it's so quiet. I keep waiting for the next disaster to strike.”

They stood there at the hearth together for a long moment, clinging together as at the edge of a precipice. “Are you ready to come to bed?” Eilonwy asked him at last. “Just to sleep, you know – 

“No, please,” he said, clutching her shoulders convulsively. “Please stay with me.”

“Yes, I will,” she said.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, King Smoit and Llassar of the Free Commots found the newlyweds yet abed, curled round one another in warm, heavy sleep, though the morning was well advanced when he came to the cottage door. 

Taran woke to the sound of the cantrev lord banging around in Dallben's kitchen, and extricated himself from Eilonwy's still-sleeping form to go and speak to the friendly bear – though he spared more than a few moments to take in the astounding sight that was Eilonwy asleep in his bed, her hair strewn over the pallet and her pale shoulder bare above the goosedown quilt. 

They hadn't made love in the night, but the new closeness he now knew to her body and breath was wonder enough to him. The rest would come, in time. He wasn't afraid.

The three men broke bread together, half-solemn and half gleeful. Taran could feel the foolish, happy smile that covered his face, and Smoit looked at him with merry eyes. 

But other thoughts came quickly rushing in, and crowded his joy in his newfound beloved from his mind. “My friends,” Taran said, his tongue turning to troubles in the daylight, “you two I trust above all others left to me – tell me what I ought to do about Caer Dathyl. Ought it to be rebuilt?”

“It stands now as a monument to the dead,” said Llassar. “That is no bad thing, Wanderer. But High Kings cannot wander as free men may do. Where else would you go?”

“There is no other place,” Smoit rumbled. “If you would rule by right of inheritance from the Sons of Don, you must rule in their ancient fastness. To do anything else risks too much.”

Taran sighed. “Can it ever be purified, do you think?”

“Yes,” Eilonwy said, entering the room still in her shift, but with her hair bound back. Her feet were bare, and the thin cloth of her shift did little to hide her shape. “Because there's nothing to purify. The blood of our dead is ours, to love and to remember. And to clean away with living, not with monuments or polish.”

Her face was solemn, but as she finished speaking she turned toward Taran, and smiled at him softly with just the corners of her mouth, and bent down to run gentle fingers along the curve of his cheekbone. “Good morning,” he murmured against her ear, and she gave him a kiss that made him go breathless and dreamy again, despite the seriousness of their discourse.

Smoit roared with laughter, and Taran, reddening, did his best to look keen and clever again.“Stop looking so addled and think about what she's saying, lad! She's right,” Smoit added. “As she often is. And she puts it very well. You'll need those kind of wits, to hold this land. You've left what few you had in bed!”

“Can you live there, before it is rebuilt?” Llassar asked.

Taran looked to Eilonwy, who nodded her assent. “Yes,” he said. “I think we need to.”

“I'll pack our things,” she said, “and get the horses ready. We should leave today. It'll take a while to travel north.” One last caress at the nape of Taran's neck, and she was gone in a whirl of linen and gold and every other thing he loved, every other thing he had left.

As Smoit left to chivvy the encamped party into motion, Taran put a hand on Llassar's shoulder. “Friend,” he said, “can you carry a message for me, when you go home? To Llonio's wife Goewin, and their children. I want to – I'm offering them Caer Dallben, if they should care to have it – and you as well, if you don't mind the children. I don't want this place to grow empty, not ever. It should be filled with strong, simple, lucky lives, and I owe Goewin dearly for her husband's life.”

“You take too many burdens on yourself, Wanderer,” Llassar said, “but I will tell her, and help her travel here if she'll have my help. And yet, I've no wish to be east rather than north, sire.”

“No one's ever called me that before,” Taran said with a wry turn of his tone.

“I am honored to be the first,” Llassar told him, strangely firm and formal. “It is a wise and generous thought, one that well befits a king. We Commot folk don't like to recognize any sovereignty but our own, but every man, woman, and child among us will know your name as that of a friend and ally, Taran King.”

Taran said nothing, but clasped his friend's hand and tried not to think about the fact that he was leaving the only home he'd ever known behind forever. When Eilonwy carried out their packs, he was amazed at how few things they had to take with them.

“I shall miss Hen Wen,” he said, lingering in the springtime orchard, not yet blossomed.

“I know,” Eilonwy replied. “But she wouldn't like Caer Dathyl at all, and she's got her piglets to think of. They'll be all right.”

*

Theirs was a long progress up through the valley cantrevs, winding past the lands of Cadiffor and Dau Gleddyn. The host of folk they'd brought with them from Caer Dallben was slowly but steadily diminishing along the way, as the easterners left on their own journeys and the southerners began to find themselves already returned to their own lands. 

Llassar went in the afternoon, riding homeward with promises for a speedy return still sounding as he went. 

But the encampments were still bright with fire and merry with food and drink and song. When Eilonwy said to Taran that it was not such a bad way to travel, he nodded and smiled, but something dark and quiet and solemn still lurked at the back of his eyes.

She abruptly wished for Gurgi, for his steadying animal presence at her side. But that was over now. She had given it up, she knew. At least she still had Lluagor, her bay mare, survivor of Adaon, comforting and familiar and sagacious.

After that it was all northward, up into sight of the glittering mountains that surrounded the white-and-gold remnant of Caer Dathyl. She'd heard folk from their retinue – commoters, she thought – talking to Taran about the state of that remnant. The iron warriors of Annuvin had been thorough in their destruction of the ancient citadel of the Sons of Don, but Taran's people were determined to rebuild it. A company of stonemasons, metalsmiths, tapestry weavers, and many other craftspeople had offered to ride ahead fast and hard to being the labor before their new king should come. 

Voices had been eager, quick to render service for Taran. He was just a farmboy, just an Assistant Pig-Keeper, for Llyr's sake, addlepated and frequently tonguetied and gauche – how could he command hearts and wills? 

But yet Eilonwy saw that he did. Again, as before, he'd become a mystery to her, just as he had been when they were children and she'd been unable to fathom all his funny worries and wishes. She loved him for it all the same, and a warm feeling flared in her when she saw him standing straight as a young tree, or moving smoothly in his saddle astride Melynlas, accepting fealty and offering all the love of his expansive heart in return. Yet, she did not entirely understand the man he was becoming, and knew it.

Their path up through the Eagle mountains was snowy yet, and glitteringly cool in the long pale nights. The mountaintops loomed around them lit by starlight by the time the cavalcade drew to a halt for the night. Tomorrow morning they would surmount the peak and enter Caer Dathyl, what was left of it. Their new home. Center of their new kingdom.

“You don't entirely look like a High King, you know,” Eilonwy told Taran as the heavy wool flaps of their tent fell closed around them, leaving them together in the warm taper-lit almost-darkness. Smoit had done his best to outfit the young king as they passed through his cantrev, but Taran's hair was still a mess. 

“And I'm sure I don't look like a queen.”

His hair, she knew from experience, could be amazingly pretty when well-kept, and though it was now raggedly cut and flyaway it still fluttered prettily around his ears and brow and neck in thick dark softness.

His dark eyes, when he looked over to meet hers, were open and unclouded, solemn and heavy. But the upward turn at the corner of his mouth lightened his countenance. “You're wrong,” he said, and something about the sound of his voice made her heart turn over in her chest. “You always look like a queen.”

He was more beautiful than anything she'd ever dreamed of having a right to, the broad-shouldered tanned strength of his body belied by the sweet vulnerability that showed in his full-lipped mouth. 

“Your dress is not quite court standard,” he went on, lighter, teasing, “and I can tell that I braided your hair for you this morning before I had enough light to see clearly, but you looked like a queen when you climbed up into my cell at Spiral Castle, and you were a mess. I don't know how you manage it. I can never seem to pull it off – but you could rule a kingdom in your nightshift.”

It ought to have been romantic, him telling stories about when they'd first met, and she had until moments ago been in the mood for romance, but his mention of Spiral Castle made something inside of her go all still and quiet, hiding, not wanting to be discovered.

“You'll just have to get by without,” she said.

*

When at last they surmounted the mountains and came to the white citadel, she could see the signs of toil all around them. They rode into the castle two abreast, and the ways that led up to the stables, and from the stables to the Great Hall, were all cleared of debris, and the white stones were so bright that Eilonwy knew someone must have washed them by hand, scouring away the traces of war.

People stood all along the ways, faces she recognized cheering them on, calling out Taran's name and wishes for his long life – which she quite agreed with, all things accounted for – and other faces as well which she did not know, that looked at the pair of them intently. Gwydion had given Taran a kingdom disunited, several factions of which were highly unlikely to be pleased by the apparent sovereignty of a farm boy and – and whatever it was she was now, that she'd given her enchantments up. They couldn't think this was going to be easy; in truth, it was an appalling mess. And she was to be queen of it, Llyr help her.

They left Melynlas and Lluagor with the grooms and walked up to the hall, followed by a tide of well-wishers. No one said anything about either of their appearance, and as she walked beside him she tried to make herself believe that they were High King and Queen of all Prydain. 

The high domed roof of the Great Hall of Caer Dathyl had fallen in during the assault, and the rebuilding of it would take more time and careful skill than could be gathered in a few short days. The majority of the hall, therefore, stretched out like an open pavilion, clean-shattered white stone left bare to the young spring sky. The weavers of the Free Commots had labored mightily and spun a spreading cloth to cover the dais. The light that filtered down onto the makeshift thrones was warm and red, beautiful and bloody, and Llonio's oldest girl-child, little Gwenlliant, stood waiting for them there, waving a banner marked with a white pig. 

“You see?” Eilonwy said to Taran in a delighted undertone. “I told you it was the proper thing. It looks perfect.”

Taran knelt down beside the child. “Hello, Gwenlliant,” he said to her, soft and gentle, and Eilonwy felt her heart melt all away. “How did you come to be here? Where's your mumma?”

“At Caer Dallben,” the little girl told Taran solemnly. “She sent me riding with Llassar, to tell you that she'd got your message and – and that she would look after your home.” It was clear from the cadence of the child's voice that she was quoting her mother directly. “And she said to tell you that I was to stay here, if it were to your liking. I can do ever so many things, that is, Your Majesty. If you will let me.”

Eilonwy's eyes slipped away from the child to take in the people behind her, men and women thronging the open space, the little girl standing foremost like a tiny emissary. “Well,” she said Gwenlliant, “come under the cover and get warm, and then I want to talk about what we'd better do.”

They crossed the open space, and took their sovereign seats, and a hush spread out. She noticed rather abstractedly that she was dizzy with holding her breath. She drew the cool spring air in, trying to convince herself that it was clean, and that she would not choke on it.


	3. Chapter 3

All over the citadel camps had been made as life returned to Caer Dathyl. Many folk had entered the citadel with Taran and his company, but many also had remained in the Eagle Mountains during the last months – the ordinary people of Caer Dathyl, who survived the battle but could not march to war. 

Many also had fled the wreck of the citadel to dwell in nearby villages. They had awaited the return of the Sons of Don, but those warriors would never come again. Instead, they had only Taran, and though he was chosen by Gwydion Prince of Don he was still scarcely more than a boy, and of no birth at all. 

King Smoit had followed close upon the company's arrival to Caer Dathyl, but had detoured by the part of the city from whence smokes and savory odors rose; and when he approached the dais he juggled a number of meat pasties and a bowl of fresh milk, and flagon hung ready at his side. 

The red-bearded king sat down with a long sigh, and then gave Gwenlliant the first choice of pasties, before offering them to the High King and Queen. Taran shook his head, only taking a long draught of milk to wet his throat. He didn't feel steady enough to eat. 

Beside him, Eilonwy was determinedly munching away at a meat pie, looking as if she relished the food no more than he. He was glad to see her eat; she had grown so thin, during their war. 

Taran felt helpless, still, to speak aloud of the great love he'd cherished for her, long before he'd begun to recognize the true feeling of his heart. He felt absurd; were they not married now? Was she not his, bound hand to hand, heart to heart?

He drew in a deep breath, surprised at the shudder that ran through the inhale. He was struck by the fear that she did _not_ love him, that she might regret her sacrifice in remaining with him. It had been a long time ago that she had fallen, laughing and bare-legged, out of the apple trees at Caer Dallben and into his arms.

But he said nothing of this to her, and so she said nothing back.

Getting to Caer Dathyl, Taran knew, had been the easy part, a stolen idyll of travel in the isolate wild, where no one could care overmuch about names or titles. But now he was come to the seat of what was to be his kingdom, and his people were going to expect him to begin acting like a king.

The throng of his own people would help in turning the tide of opinion toward him, but Taran would need to check over their organization, review the food stores and make sure that everyone was provided for, and knew what their work was to be. He had a court to build, Llyr help him. He swallowed dryly, looking out from the high seat that he had taken.

People were gathering to greet them, and speak to the new-proclaimed High King. _Their court._ The thought filled Taran with not a little dread; he was nothing but a farm boy, and feared that his manner would scarcely pass muster as kingly. Eilonwy would have to be regal for them both, he thought, and the corner of his mouth twisted upward in amusement at the thought of the contrast they might present to one another, pig-keeper and princess side by side.

A brown-haired, brown-skinned man of middle age and middle height approached the dais, bowing low with a murmured, “Your Majesty.” 

Taran squirmed inwardly with still-startled discomfort at the obeisance, and silence spread out awkwardly around them, until Taran realized that the man was waiting for his permission to speak, and hastened to give it.

The man straightened, and said, in a pleasantly mid-ranged voice, “Your Majesty, I am Kai son of Keredic, who have been steward to Flewddur Flam Son of Godo for these many years he has been away on errantry and in war.”

Enthroned at Taran's side, Eilonwy smiled then like the sun coming out on a cloudy day. “You're Flewddur's steward? How nice to meet you! We've heard all about you, of course, and he always spoke very well of you. I suppose you know he's gone beyond the sea?”

Kai nodded. “Yes, Queen, we received word of his passing nearly a week ago now, and it is for that reason why I have come.” 

He bowed even lower, and Taran could feel his face growing hot with a strangely powerful shame. “Majesties, I bring a petition from my Cantrev that I be allowed to keep rule of my lord's lands. He has no heir, and we thought – since I've been doing it for so long -”

“Of course you can,” Taran said, desperate to get the man up off his knees, to which he had sunk at the end of his request. “Of course! My old companion chose you as his regent, and that's more than enough for me or anyone else! Oh, but, please tarry here for a while, for our council, if you will. We would be glad of your advice, friend of our friend.”

Kai rose and retired to a seat with a small smile; Taran got the distinct impression that the steward had observed all he felt, and was amused by his awkwardness. Well, if he'd been in service to Flewddur he must be used to awkwardness. Nothing for it but to continue on.

The next face that Taran saw was equally a surprise to him, but dearly welcome. Dwyvach Weaver-Woman did not bow her white head even the smallest degree when she came in under the red canopies. 

“Well, Wanderer,” she said, voice every bit as dry and filled with asperity as he remembered it, “you have come to a pretty place. Did you see the pattern ahead of you, to know what royal hues were tangled in it?”

Taran laughed. “I did not see the pattern at all,” he said, “although I have a cloth that I would show you – I think you will be impressed by the workmanship.”

“Of your making?”

“In a way, though my hands did not string the loom. The patterning is my own, I'm told. But how long have you been here? When did you leave Commot Gwenith – and why?”

“I was here more than a week since, Wanderer. Word travels swift, and I knew you would have need of me. You see the work of my hands above you.”

He looked up into the red canopies that spread above him like blood through veins, and saw them again, suddenly, as familiar, and felt obscurely comforted.

Dwyvach took the seat nearest Eilonwy. “And you too, girl,” she said, more quietly. “Although your pattern, too, may not have been quite what you expected it to be.” She met Eilonwy's eyes, and Taran could not read the gaze that flashed between them.

Smoit's flask, which turned out to hold watered wine, passed from hand to hand. Taran drank but little, cautious of the headache already building behind his eyes. 

“King Smoit,” he said at last, “once you offered me the lordship of your lands. It was a generous thing, though,” he added ruefully, “I could not take what you gave. But now I have a heavier burden of responsibility to carry, and yet very little knowledge of ruling a people.”

“It strikes me,” Smoit said, “that you ruled well enough in Gwydion's wars. Did you not command men then? And you did well, in Cadiffor – better than I myself was able to.”

Smoit's praise warmed Taran's heart; it did not settle his fears. “Nevertheless, what must I do,” he asked the large lord, “to prove myself worthy of these people's fealty? How am I to make them accept me? I am a stranger to them, an unknown quantity, and I cannot win them one by one, as I did the people of the Free Commots, in simple fellowship.”

“But don't you see that that's exactly what you must do?” Eilonwy interrupted. Gwenlliant, who had remained sitting quietly beside her, looked up with wide eyes. “That is – I watched how Queen Teleria managed it, back on Mona. It seemed like she wasn't doing any ruling at all, but things always seemed to happen just the way she wanted them to, so I did my best to find out how it was done. Finally I realized that she had the head cooks and chief diplomats and suchnot so convinced that she was their greatest friend that they did the work of convincing everyone else! Really remarkably efficient – and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't do the same.”

Dwyvach Weaver-Woman nodded. “The Princess – the Queen, rather, the High Queen – has something there. Win those you need, and what care the rest?” 

“I do,” Taran said, “but I take your meaning,” he added with a quick look at Eilonwy. “Who do I most need to win?”

“The other rulers, obviously,” she said. “The lords and ladies of – well, they're yours, I suppose, or ours – of your lands. Properly they ought to leave representatives here, to join our court. But at the very least, we must receive them here with ceremony.”

“Meet your lords and ladies face to face, Wanderer,” Llassar said, ducking into the pavilion with a wide grin on his plain goodnatured face, “and you will have their loyalty, for any who have eyes to see will know your purpose and nature.”

“Well met, friend – but I'm not entirely sure that was a compliment,” said Taran wryly, rising to clasp Llassar's hand in greeting. “All right,” he told his queen.“I will gather everyone here together. Then at least we'd all be able to talk about things.”

“What sort of things?”

“About how we manage from here,” he said. “About how we rebuild. About how we do better.” Shyly, Taran admitted, “Though I have traveled through much of Prydain, I do not know the names of many of its powers. Your own, and those of the lords surrounding you, and the names of the Free Commots I know. But the western lands, and the northern – the Prince of Pen-Llarcau I knew once lies years buried, and he was a second son. Who now has lordship there?”

“I know some of their names,” Eilonwy offered, and - “What?” she said to the face he made. “Did you think I spent that year on Mona doing nothing but sticking needles into things? Their idea was to make me Queen of Mona, but though correcting them on that point was not nearly so fun as you might think, they did teach me enough that I might just as well be the queen of someplace else.”

“And I others,” Smoit rumbled comfortingly. “Do not fear, my boy. We won't leave you alone.”

“My master was kin to the House of Don,” Kai offered in his comforting middle-range voice. “I have managed his affairs for many years, and have contacts and knowledge in many of Prydain's cantrevs. These things I lay at your feet, Majesty.”

“But do you not need to return to your own lands?” Taran asked him. 

“I can be absent some weeks more without danger,” the ex-steward said, “and what I have to teach can be taught in that space with ease. I also am new at being a king.”

“But not at ruling a kingdom,” Taran said warmly, liking the man more and more. Kai reminded him of Coll: steady, solid, with a core of incorruptible oak and a wellspring of infinite patience beside.

“You'll need messengers,” said Llassar, rising. “If you will permit it, I will organize a body of swift riders. We have horses enough, and youths who will gladly ride for you.”

“Son of Drudwas,” Taran told him, “you have not only my permission but my thanks as well.” And the youth was off again, running as if he'd not been traveling up and down the breadth of Prydain for weeks. Taran envied him his energy, and his resolve.

There was one other thing that worried him, but he wanted to wait until he could speak to Eilonwy alone of it. He wasn't sure that spreading this secret any further than her ears was at all wise.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been high noon when he and Eilonwy had ridden into Caer Dathyl, and his discourse with the people within its walls had taken much time. The sun was setting by the time he'd finished, and when the long-faced man who introduced himself as the old High King Math's seneschal offered to bring him to his tent, Taran accepted gratefully. 

The seneschal was a gentle-voiced man, of more than middle age. His name was Huw, and his manner toward Taran was warm and welcoming. Well, there was one he'd apparently managed to win over – he'd no idea how.

A tent the size of a small house had been pitched for them on the western side of the great courtyard, heavy velvets and soft wools hanging from sturdy posts. That first night, when the last rushlight burned out, Taran found himself clinging to Eilonwy in the dark.

“Are you all right?” she said softly. “Taran?”

“I'm sorry,” he said into her hair. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

The secrets of tilling land and forging metal that he had saved from the treasure-house of the Death-Lord weighed on Taran's mind. He had not yet spoken of them to any one. It wasn’t that he intended to keep them for himself. He just couldn’t think of the proper way to share them. 

He would not, he had resolved, have them struggled over. Too well he remembered Coll’s death in the Red Fallows, and the tale that the old Planter of Turnips had told him of the destruction of that land. In his most secret dreams he hoped to one day reverse it, restoring the richest soil in all Prydain to its former glory and washing away that taint of blood that held it silent and barren. But whether or no, he would not allow its sad history to be repeated, not if he could help it.

He had meant to tell Eilonwy of his perplexity, and perhaps ask for her advice, but the words withered in his dry throat and he could not speak.

She broke the silence, which threatened to become tense. “You're doing just fine,” she told him. “Tomorrow I'll cut your hair, and then no one will believe you haven't always been a High King.” 

Which made him laugh, just as she had meant for it to do, and he relaxed into the circle of her arms and into sleep. He did not realize that she herself sat awake long into the night.

* 

As Llassar's messengers rode out with the news, people began to gather at Caer Dathyl in response to Taran's call. And, although the castle remained a shattered ruin, inhabitation was already starting to transform it once more into a center of human life and political power.

Smoit of Cadiffor had never left, confessing to Taran late one night that he preferred the excitement of Caer Dathyl to his own castle's recollections of captivity and grief. His camp, pitched under the auspices of his ursine banner, quickly enfolded the lords Gast and Goryon, when they arrived. Taran had to smile when he saw the quarrelsome following in the wake of the red-bearded king; he did not fear their opposition, at least.

Nor did Taran fear the representatives that came from the Free Commots, his comrades in arms and in labor. Of these there were three: Dywvach Weaver-Woman, appointed to the position without ever actually leaving Caer Dathyl, and a lad Taran vaguely remembered from the wreck of Commot Merin, Eneyd. He looked very different when his face was not streaked with soot and tears. 

The third commoter Taran had not known before, but when the black-browed man bowed his head to the High Queen he hailed her as the slayer of Dorath, and his depthless eyes were burning as he did so. His name, he told them, was Erec, and he kept to himself in the white-walled citadel, avoiding the colorful camps. Taran could see the anger gnawing at the man's heart, but he trusted him nevertheless; Erec's anger was not meant for him, but for mutual enemies.

The old King of Pen-Llarcau, who journeyed down from his lands in the north, was another story. Pen-Llarcau was now a man past sixty, sharpened like a flint knife by the wearing years he'd spent carefully gathering life out of his lands. The same flinty desperation that Taran remembered from Ellidyr's eyes so long ago shone in his dark glance, but without the wistful boyishness that had allowed him to eventually feel pity for the prince. Pen-Llarcau had borne that bitterness through all the years of a lifetime, and it showed in every line of his face and every sinew of his body.

Taran spoke to him, when they first met, of Ellidyr. The old king's face turned from flint to ice at the mention of his lost son, and Taran did not dare to speak of him again, though it hurt his heart to remain silent. Pen-Llarcau clearly did not hold his son to have died well; though Taran could not agree less, and honored Ellidyr's memory highly, he nevertheless was silenced by the harshness of Pen-Llarcau's dismissal. The loss sat between them like an uninvited guest, strange and only half-acknowledged.

They were not all assembled yet, but the visiting lords and ladies were sufficient in number to make it necessary that they begin to hold a proper court. At Eilonwy's request, their official seat remained in the grassy pavilion, and the returning ladies of the court worked to extend and elaborate the woven tapestries that constituted its walls.

Kai Son of Keredic was now always at the young king's side, sharing what he knew about each new arrival, aiding Taran in putting together an understanding of the cracks and faults of power that ran through the political structure of their world.

* 

Eilonwy had found herself, once more, extremely busy. It seemed to be her fate in life. King and queen they were now, but of a rack and ruin, and the summer getting on. There was more than enough to be done.

“Here,” Eilonwy said, whispering, to little Gwenlliant, “run up to Mistress Erliye and see if there's any new bread. And go quick, mind!”

Taran, feeling scared and uncomfortable in the finest tunic he'd ever worn, looked at her questioningly. 

“Well, we can at least keep everyone fed,” Eilonwy said. “That's the only good thing to come out of those weeks you made me spend wrangling supplies and ponies and people, great and mighty War Leader: I know just how happy a full stomach can make even the snarliest of people.”

A golden circlet wrapped around her brow, thicker and heavier than the one she'd worn home from Mona, and the crescent moon of Llyr at her throat, and it didn't matter that her smock was far plainer and simpler than was appropriate for her station, because her self-assured regalness left no doubt as to who she was.

The king's dining table was a long oaken affair, laid out beneath the crimson curtains, and when they sat down at the end of the day, from their position at the head of it they could see down its length. It was a strange spectacle: a combination of farmers and lordlings and old women. 

Eilonwy could tell from the sour looks on many of the nobles' faces that they didn't much like the picture, but then again she didn't much care – let them be as lemony as they liked. Taran wouldn't budge on anything he thought was truly important, and she was of the opinion that Caer Dathyl could do with a bit of his kind of stubbornness.

She would have her turn at souring those same faces soon enough. 

As people streamed into Caer Dathyl, many who had fled the city in time of war were returning to it, and between that and the various newcomers who had arrived she was building up a fair number of unmarried young ladies that people kept insistently placing under her protection. She supposed that she could see why they'd want to be there – most girls didn't find their lovers in prison cells, or practically grow up beside them on small farmsteads. 

She didn't even want to think about what it would be like, trying to find a husband in a court, with your parents interfering and a whole host of ways to get into trouble or muff the whole thing. They never would have managed like that! It had been hard enough getting Taran to admit that he loved her when they spent every waking hour together unchaperoned.

Worrying at the problem like a loose tooth, she turned to Taran under the guise of refilling his wine cup; he'd been sitting in silence, just watching the table with big, dark eyes. The roar of conversation was loud enough that she felt confident in their ability to speak to one another without anyone else taking notice, which happened more and more rarely, to her chagrin. 

Taking the chance, she said, “We're going to have to do something about the court ladies.”

He started up as if out of a reverie, and his lashes fluttered against his cheek, and she stopped breathing for just a second.

“Hmm?” he queried inarticulately. “What's wrong with the court ladies?”

“You only ask that,” she replied, “because you've never spent much time with them. The whole affair seems to be designed to leave them all as silly and witless as can be. They have nothing to do but weave and gossip! Taran, if I have to spend the rest of my life weaving and gossiping, I'll run mad within the month.”

Taran grinned wanly at her. It was late afternoon, wearing on into evening, but already he looked tired, with great dark smudges under his eyes and a pinched sort of tension pulling at his mouth. “It doesn't sound so bad to me,” he said, taking a bite of his bread and cheese. “If I could spend a whole day spinning and weaving -!”

“When you're queen, you can set everyone to weaving, then! But I shan't. It tangles my wits and my temper,” she snapped back at him, and then quickly wished she hadn't. He looked so _worn._

“We can scarcely turn girls away, you know,” he told her.

“Of course not. But there's no reason why girls can't be sensible rather than silly. It's the way everyone's kept all together, and given nothing important to do, and wound up in pointless clothes that make it impossible to run or climb or do anything at all that isn't sitting and chattering. I've always been useful, and I mean to go on being so – and since I have to look after all the girls who want to stay here, they're going to have to become useful into the bargain.”

“There aren't any apple trees here for you to teach them to climb, Princess,” he said with a grin that was part-roguish and part-wistful.

“I always fell out of the apple trees anyway,” she said.

Down the table, Erec of the Free Commots bent to kiss the hand of a light-haired girl who was attached to the retinue of old Pen-Llarcau. She giggled and blushed; the noblemen around her looked stormy. 

“Well,” Taran said with a sigh, “if you can keep war from erupting over marriage contracts, that will be something.” 

Raising his voice, he shot a question at the commoter that engaged them both in a debate about the best way to extend the law into the no-man's-lands where bandits roamed – one that nicely sidestepped the rising quarrel. A few complimentary remarks to the young man at Pen-Llarcau's left, who was his younger surviving son, on the safety of that fief, and the tension melted back into loud and boastful speech.

Eilonwy shot an approving glance at him; he was learning.


	5. Chapter 5

And still people came to Caer Dathyl. Queen Penardun of the Western Domains, stepmother of Pryderi who was now dead and new mistress of those lands, rode into the city pale but straight-backed. She was a cool, collected, somehow sorrowful woman who might have been carved out of white soapstone: hard but yet yielding, not glittering but somehow luminous, at once silky and stony. 

“She was not of the House of Don,” Kai whispered in Taran’s ear as the now-reigning queen arrived and made her greeting, “and so it was judged that she could not rule beside Pwyll as his queen and equal. Now that they are gone, she's taken up what was left after Pwyll's son finished with the place.”

Younger lords and ladies were also arrived, bringing their own cares to throw onto the collective pile, as Prydain struggled to reform in the wake of war.

Gwythyr of Rheged was a young warrior with a haughty, heavily-tanned brown face who nevertheless laughed merrily enough once he'd had a stoup of wine. He'd arrived in company with Enid of Mawr, every bit as golden and beautiful of body as she was hot-tempered and prone to a quarrel. 

Also with them came Evnissyen of Madoc, sister-son to the king of Madoc they'd known. He had cold eyes like that dead lord's set in a slim and boyish form, and was scarcely older than Taran himself, alternately shy and bitterly proud.

Taran worried about these last arrivals – the West Domains and Madoc had both been home to traitors to the House of Don, and were not likely to be fast friends of his, and while he could not prove anything he knew that the southern cantrevs of Prydain had nearly universally supported Arawn's lieutenant the Horned King. 

But it was the friendly face of a familiar elder that would hurt him most deeply. 

Left alone as Dowager Queen of Mona, Queen Teleria sent King Rhuddlum's old master of horse as her emissary, who had ridden with Taran in search of Eilonwy years before. Ynawc bore kind words to them from the Queen, and every one of the fell onto Taran's heart like a live coal and burned. The image of Rhun's still face, pale in the darkness, was never far from his mind.

“Better that she should hate me, and give me blame,” he told the neat-bearded, bright-eyed warrior. 

“You were always a good companion to her boy,” Ynawc said. “His death was not at your hands, King of Prydain.”

“I promised him that I would go and build his sea-wall for him, in Mona harbor,” Taran said sadly. “I have not been able to keep my word.”

“Let me send word back to my queen, then, and I will find you a stonewright on Mona who can execute your wishes there,” Ynawc offered. “A new sea-wall would be a great boon to us, and any aid Caer Dathyl and the High King might give would be honored.”

“He's too used to doing things with his own hands, you see,” Eilonwy told Ynawc confidingly. “That's what comes of making princes of pig-keepers.” 

Taran felt the remonstrance hidden in her teasing: don't take everything on yourself.

“Lady of Llyr,” Ynawc replied with a bow of his head, “I can think of no better prince than one who knows the value of his own handiwork.” He smiled. “It does my heart good to see you wed,” he told her. “You were a caged bird on Mona, and now you are a free queen and a fit consort to a good king. Long life to you both, King and Queen of Prydain.”

“I always liked him, you know,” Eilonwy said confidingly. “He was much less silly than everyone else.” Taran just nodded, and said nothing, and thought again of poor Rhun's unfinished plans and improvements.

* 

Caer Dathyl itself was in great need of such planning and restoration. Taran had been speaking with the workers laboring to reclaim the castle's toppled and scorched stonework, learning of their long, heavy task of rebuilding. Much would need to be done before the onset of winter, thankfully more than a sixmonth hence.

The farmers and cottagers who lived in the mountains surrounding the castle were nearer to rebuilding than he; having hidden with seeds, children, and livestock in mountain caves, many families had re-established their farms, and were grateful to see new life taking hold in the center of commerce represented by the citadel. With them, his bonds of loyalty and exchange were like to be strong.

But one loss he could only mourn, and nothing could he do to salvage it. In the battle of Caer Dathyl, the treachery of Pryderi had led to the destruction of the Hall of Bards. The songs, legends, treasures, and history of the whole of Prydain littered the once-splendid room, now, no more than ashes. 

Taliesin was gone, and although the bardic order strove to hold through the breach, the Hall itself seemed unreclaimable. None there were now, Taran had been told, who could enter the deeper levels of the house, where the mysteries of the initiates dwelt. What lay buried beneath the earth was lost to them, as much as if it, too, had been consumed by fire. In truth, the loss was almost total.

“Truly, it’s the worst possible loss of all,” Taran lamented to his counsellors in the evening, when all were met at table. “And scarcely can I see what might be done to restore that place. In my boyhood, I mourned my companion, Adaon son of Taliesin, when he fell in battle. But then, I trusted that the wisdom of the bards would carry on, even so. Now, what hope is left?”

“Only a fool’s hope, perhaps,” Smoit rumbled into the silence that followed Taran’s dark words. “Still, who here has not played the fool in his time?”

Speaking close to Taran’s ear, her voice quiet and shy, Gwenlliant, who had been serving at table, said, “My father always taught us, that if we looked, we’d find more than met the eye.”

“That’s very true, Gwenlliant,” Taran replied, also keeping his voice low and private, meant just for her. “Your father Llonio was a true genius at finding of all sorts – finding things lost, and things he never knew he needed. I am indebted to his daughter, as I was in his debt, for reminding me of what’s possible, if you keep your eyes open, in addition to hoping. We will make our own luck, as he always did.”

* 

Eilonwy it was, now, who was making her own luck, in their bed when they were left alone at night. She was growing bolder. Taran knew that he was not covering himself with glory in that respect – but it felt safer, somehow, to let her take the lead. In truth, he wasn’t sure he understood why she was there, in his bed as his wife and queen, and he didn’t want to do anything to jinx it.

When she slid her hands beneath his shirt, alone in the warm, quiet darkness of their tent, Taran knew he blushed long and hot. With his smallclothes still in place, and her shift still hanging loosely around her shoulders, she would pull him down beneath her, and wrap her slight frame around him tightly, pressing close, close, the plane of his collarbone beneath her cheek and the warmth of his breath against her neck.

They would kiss like they could never get enough of it, like kissing could replace breathing between them. And sometimes they moved together, pressing, grinding, and Taran was not yet so old or insensitive a man that he could long withstand that. And then he would make an excuse, shamefaced again, and go to change and clean up before bed.

He feared to ask if she was happy, if she was satisfied, if she wanted more. Every answer she could give held thorns, in one way or another, and if he was not yet old and insensible, yet, too, he was no longer the Assistant Pig-Keeper who rushed headlong into a thicket of thorns in pursuit of a lost charge. He had learned caution – perhaps, too well.

That was why it was perverse to bring up contention subjects before bed. Certainly, Taran should have known better. But the things he had seen and learned during the day weighed heavy on his tongue, and he found himself unable to prevent himself from speaking.

“Eilonwy,” he said, raising himself on an elbow, “you have to help me.”

“Mmm?” she questioned, sounding distant and drowsy.

“I’m sorry, you’re tired …. It’s just, I can’t stop thinking about the treasure Gurgi saved for us out of the fires of Annuvin, those secrets of past artisans and craftspeople. Everyone needs them so badly! Many cantrevs took in no harvest last autumn, and too many households are on the brink of starving.”

“You can't just tell people willy-nilly,” she replied curtly, sounding cynical and sullen to Taran’s admittedly sensitive ears. “Why, you'd be practically inviting civil war. One lord would hold his possession of the secrets above another, and men would torture their neighbors to forcibly take their knowledge.”

“But to tell no one -”

“You have a power in your hands,” she said, low and fierce, though he still could not clearly see her face. “If you throw it away, you're being a fool. We need that leverage, if we're to establish ourselves firmly – we need something to bargain with, to exchange for given loyalty.”

“This land is a harsh mistress.” His voice was equally passionate; his heart was filled with memories of the old farmer Craddoc, who had lied to him and claimed to be his father, wearing himself out against the hills that were to have been his home and his legacy; but he did not speak those thoughts. 

He had no spoken of that time in his life to her. Eilonwy would only be angry at the lies Craddoc had told to him. She wouldn't see the deep despair that had driven the man to lie.

“Nevertheless,” she said, pressing her advantage as he hesitated,“you can't deny that I'm right; giving them to some would be worse than giving them to none.”

“I'll think on it a while longer, then. But I will not let them long lie hid, I promise you that.”

“Promise me what you like,” she said, and went silent, still curled up facing away from him.


	6. Chapter 6

At last, enough of those needed were gathered at Caer Dathyl for the assembly of a High Council. The spring was advancing, now, the first buds emerging on the fruit trees in the orchards that grew at the feet of the still-snowcapped mountains. 

Taran let it be known that he would hold the Council three sequential days, culminating with the festivities of Beltaine and Springreturn. Then the High King and Queen would be recognized by all, and oaths of loyalty renewed.

The timing of it had been Eilonwy's idea - “Less chance of anyone riding off in a huff if they know there's to be a good party,” she'd said.

Taran had bowed, at the time, to the wisdom of her suggestion, although something in him still shrank from what seemed to him to be a kind of calculating, almost manipulative way of thinking. She’d always been cleverer than he, he knew that well enough – if little else.

There was no room or hall left standing in the ruins of Caer Dathyl that was large enough to fit all of the many lords and representatives who would be attending, and so Taran could only expand his outdoor pavilion, and hope against rain.

No rain came, and on the first day of the council Taran stood up in front of the assembled people, hair bound back and held down by a gold circlet, clad in a richly-embroidered tunic of fine gray-green wool, with Dyrnwyn buckled in its scabbard about his waist. 

Beside him, Eilonwy was fully washed and be-gowned, her hair braided with ribbons and her brows filleted with pale gems strung on delicate gold wire. She wore his ring on her finger still, but she'd left the crescent of Llyr off that day, and her bare neck was pale in the morning light. 

He was terrified, dizzy and sick with worry, and now that the moment had actually arrived he felt himself moving through a strange dreamy haze. Nevertheless, it was his to speak, and so he did. 

“Welcome, my lords and ladies and other honored folk, to Caer Dathyl. I have called you here together that we may discuss the ordering of these lands now that Annuvin has fallen, provide for those in need and defend those who are vulnerable with the strength and plenty of all. 

‘You have sworn no oaths to me, but all of Prydain was united for many years under the House of Don, and I am Prince Gwydion's chosen successor. I will use force against no one who will not swear me fealty, but I hope to prove to you all that we are stronger together than we are apart. Your oaths I leave to you.” 

His words tumbled out into the still spring air, and when he stopped speaking he felt that he could hear echoes of them curling back toward him. His hands were shaking; he hoped that nobody could tell.

“Be seated, boy,” said Dwyvach Weaver-Woman's cracked, low voice, utterly without ceremony. “We have too long a work for you to stand the while.”

A laugh went around the table, and Taran felt himself flush – but it seemed to be the right thing to have been said, and the awkward silence came to an end as bargaining began.

Over the last weeks, Taran had been learning the ways of statecraft – and learning as he did so that the knowledge was not so different from that which he already possessed: it seemed to mainly be a question of discovering the needs and desires or fears of each fief, and then putting problems together into solutions. He'd been doing _that_ all his life, both on Dallben's farm and in his later wanderings. 

Here, pride was more touchy and anger closer to the surface, but it all came down to the same principles of compromise and mutual support in the end.

Dwyvach, who had begun, carried her advantage: “The Free Commonts would know, Wanderer, why we ought to pledge to you, who have never before pledged king or lord.”

“Because Annuvin has exacted its toll on us all,” Taran replied, ready and earnest. “We have lost too much to remain divided. Only together can we heal our land.”

“And would you be our liege-lord, with the right to call our boys to war at your whim, and a collection taken up for your treasury?” Erec spoke darkly, but Taran trusted to the bright honesty he'd seen beneath the man's rough exterior, and did not mistake his concern for anything more unquiet.

He put his shoulders back, lifting his chin. “The House of Don ruled in that way,” he replied, “and the people of the Commots would not pledge themselves under those terms. I cannot expect you to give me obedience that you refused Math Son of Mathonwy; that would be both over-proud and over-foolish. I ask your oaths under a new covenant, to be devised by those assembled here.” He paused, fighting to keep his breath under control, to not display too much of his fear and anxiety.

Eilonwy shifted but did not rise; her slight movement was enough to refocus the attention of every person present on her. 

“Think of us not as liege but ligature, a strong cord to bind together the interests and needs of Prydain. We are here to serve not ourselves but you, and all your people. The replenishing and rebuilding of all lands is our charge.” Her voice held all the confidence that he knew his own lacked. “We propose that all here present provide a list of needs and resources, to be kept recorded here, and that your High King and Queen help you to help one another. It would be foolish for any of you to go against us. None in Prydain right now is strong enough to stand alone.”

The sound of her voice settled Taran's whirling thoughts, and he stood once she'd finished speaking, not giving the assembly the chance to begin picking her apart. He'd made his decision. “There is something else you all should know,” he said, heart in his mouth, and all eyes returned to him. He could feel Eilonwy's attention like a burning brand; he did not allow himself to meet her gaze. 

He told it simply: “Many years ago, Annuvin stole from us secrets of tilling fields and forging metals, secrets that we discovered, that ought rightfully to be ours. We ought by rights possess these secrets, which would ease our lives and swell our harvests – and after this last year, we will need that increase badly. I and my companions were in Annuvin when it was burned to ashes, and out of all the treasures hidden there we managed to save only a little metal coffer. It contains many of those lost secrets, written down. I don't know how much knowledge was lost, or – but – I have these in my possession now.”

Gwythyr of Rheged rose with a roar, drowning out the others' murmurs of reaction in his sudden-fired suspicion. “I see your drift, pig-boy!” he said with a snarl. “Lord it over us with your treasures, will you? Secrets can always be discovered by force, if need be. It will be open war, before I'll be strong-armed into alliance in this way!”

“It would be war you would lose, King of Rheged,” Penardun cut in, even and low and chill as a knifeblade. “For I pledge all the strength and wealth of the Western Lands to the defense and disposal of the Lord of Caer Dathyl.”

This sudden declaration quieted the assembly all together, and in the resultant silence Taran could hear birdsong, and the sound of the wind against stone. “I thank you, lady,” he said, “and I will meet your boldness in kind and ask you: why have you done so?”

She smiled cooly at him. “I know how to recognize a winning side when I see one. Pwyll's son betrayed his king, and so onus is now placed on me to show that I am no such traitor. Very well, sire, I can serve your purposes in this, and so demonstrate my loyalty. A neat thing, is it not?” She raised a perfect eyebrow, tranquil as stone.

Daring greatly, Taran returned to his previous theme, holding one hand palm-outward to forestall any more irate interjections. “I know,” he said, “I know that Prydain needs this knowledge. All of Prydain. I've wandered the length of it, and seen the poverty of our fields, our barren lands and blighted families, and my heart has wept for that. But I think we must take care that everyone benefits equally from our re-discovery. This must not become another way for us to make war on one another, or to subjugate some and elevate others. So, I have something to add to the proposal which Queen Eilonwy has already put to you all.”

He swallowed, throat suddenly thick, seeing not the assembled nobles, but Coll's garden in Caer Dallben, with sweet-pea climbing up the shaft of an old spear. He felt suddenly, terribly homesick. “I will take the coffer of secrets to the place known as the Red Fallows, and there all may come to read them, and put them into practice in reclaiming that land, which is the most blighted spot in all Prydain. Your people will then all have the chance to learn, and will be able to bring their knowledge back home with them, when they come – and the Red Fallows will no longer be tainted land, but will bear blossom and fruit once more. And I will hold them in trust until folk come to husband them.” 

The pavilion was silent for a long moment. He at last allowed himself to look at Eilonwy; her face was blank and unreadable, and beside her Smoit's was tense and anxious. Penardun sat still and unconcerned; she had already made her choice known, and it was an arrow in his quiver for certain, to have the support of the Western Domains already at his call. 

No voice was raised against him. Gwythyr of Rheged sat still and surly, but a slight inclination of his head indicated that the saw the logic of the proposition. The folk from the Free Commots were all, to a one, looking at him with bright excited eyes, and he smiled a little, reminded again of the wonderful spirit of inquiry that drove those settlements, the thirst for knowledge and skill. Their thirst was his refreshment.

The voice the spoke up at length was not one that Taran had expected to hear. Teirnyon of Dau Gleddyn, one of the southern cantrevs long-allied to Annuvin, had only arrived that morning, riding an exhausted nag, looking as if he had not slept for days. He was a haggard man in middle age with a harried, anxious eye, as if constantly fearful of some unseen blow or cut. 

“I will take your proposal,” Teirnyon said, “if you will first swear me a thing. I have a pressing need, one that cannot wait on your scribes and systems. It is not my need only.” He looked around, grim and dour. “You have all been very careful to not commit yourselves, to keep from looking to my cantrev, but I say you are fools for it. The threat is not to me alone.”

“Spit it out, old man,” Enid of Mawr drawled, her tawny eyes predatory and intent in despite of her tone’s expressed boredom and dismissal. “Name your condition.”

Teirnyon wrung his hands, and Taran felt an inexplicable chill fall over the assembly. 

“Sire,” Teirnyon said, tacitly and without question accepting Taran's claim, “my lands border on the wreck of Spiral Castle, which in destruction has become an evil place. It is – we need – that is, Sire, I beg of you – I demand – that you raze that ruin to the ground, and use what arts you can to purify the place again. We will never be safe with that foothold of darkness left to spread its malignancy out.”


	7. Chapter 7

The decision would not be made that day; instead, the assembly broke up soon after Teirnyon made his request, the lords, ladies, and freeborn folk each retreating to their own tents and people to debate and choose. And the next day was Beltaine, and it would be filled with celebration, and so the crucial moment would not come for another few days. 

Eilonwy scarcely knew what passed at the closing of the assembly; Taran must have handled all the rituals and forms properly enough, for no one seemed put out or offended. It was as if a dark veil had fallen over her inner mind, and she was left peering at everything through shadowing gauze, removed from it all, and purblind. She said nothing of her thoughts, but made her excuses, vanishing into solitude as though seeking refuge.

Now she understood, she thought to herself in that dizzy darkness, why she had felt so cold and frightened when Taran had said the name of Spiral Castle, in the warm dark before they'd come to Caer Dathyl. She had known, all without knowing, that it still sat waiting for her, brooding like a hideous spider that does not need to move from the center of its web to trap the struggling fly.

She'd tried so hard to forget that she'd lived there, had worked to fill up her memory with sunny memories and bucolic experiences, bright thoughts and open words. Dallben had made that easy for her, as had Coll, and she had loved them for that, for the tact that made the two men silent on the girl's family, and upbringing, and past. Even if they had let Achren in while she was gone.

Achren. She shuddered at the name, her hands tightening in the folds of her kirtle. 

Her earliest memories were of Achren's bloodred nails pinching her own baby wrist, stinging again soft infant skin when Achren slapped her. There had never been any love lost between the two of them, never – and yet – and yet Achren was all Eilonwy had known of family, until Taran found her. All she'd ever had of her father, her mother. It had been Achren who had told her her own name, and the names of her forebears, and for that gift of knowledge Eilonwy would always owe Achren something. Which was the most really horrible part.

She slept badly, all alone, that night, and so the littlest girls of the castle came together to draw the Queen out of her chambers a-Maying the next morning. 

Beltaine morn. She could remember stealing times for May Day daydreams in those years at Caer Dallben, which had sometimes featured Taran and sometimes had not. Dallben had said the whole thing was, if not outright nonsense, then at least a debased set of folk-practices that had largely lost their connection to the real rituals behind them.

And, too, Eilonwy remembered the Beltaine she’d spent with the royal family on Mona, just the once: stately dances and comely revelry around bright fires through the night, Teleria presiding over the festivities like a goddess of honey and gold. Eilonwy had drunk wine for the first time that night, unwatered but spice-laced, and it had made her feel heavy and loose-limbed and free-tongued – although still not enough that she didn’t dodge Prince Rhun, when the suggestion was made that he might try to kiss her.

But the Prydain of her childhood was gone, burned and drowned by war and loss. And the Beltaine fires had changed, too, with so many lost and gone. And Eilonwy was different herself, now, although she scarcely felt it. 

That night, it would be hers to play the part of the May Queen, and wait for the Year King to come to her across the fire, to bless the land and start the cycle of growth and birth anew. Of course it would fall to her, and none other – for was she not the new High Queen? And Taran, too, would have to play his part.

She went out into the morning with the giggling girls and maidens, and let them braid her bright hair with flowers, her mind all the while in a sort of haze, full of mist and gold, out of focus and almost out of time. 

The day passed, scarcely without her knowing it, and then the sun was going down. She found that she was hungry, and glad to sit down. She hoped she hadn’t said anything rude to anyone, over the course of the afternoon when her mind had been so distracted.

There was wine to drink again when they joined the festivities in the still-ruined Great Hall, where the bright stars and the rising moon showed through the spaces between the red-webbed temporary ceiling. A great fire had been kindled in the center of the lawn, and musicians played tunes in dancing meters.

The women and girls had clothed Eilonwy in a robe of layered, gauzy white cloth, and still her head was wreathed with braids and flowers; her circlet they fastened amid the riot, so that it, too, was twined about with blossoms.

As the drums pounded louder, Dwyvach the weaver-woman found Eilonwy by the fireside, and caught the young Queen’s hand. “Enjoy your beauty tonight, young lady,” the old woman said. “You are a bloom to grace us all, and I give thanks for you.”

Eilonwy barely knew how to respond. She felt very strange and apart from all, insulated and isolated from the crowd; and Dwyvach’s words left her no bridge to get back across the gulf that seemed to separate her from the other revelers.

A feast had been laid out for the Queen and her maidens in a fair pavilion beside the fire; and Eilonwy followed Dwyvach there, to rest and eat. As they reclined in comfort, she had perhaps more wine to drink than she had quite intended; it was difficult to tell, when one wasn’t on one’s feet, how much one’s head was swimming.

She ought, she knew, to be keeping track of the social shifts that were taking place around her; Beltaine was a festival to establish alliances, or dally with glad-friends, and she would be able to learn much, if she could get herself to pay attention to the shadowy motions of men and women around the great bonfire. She glimpsed Enid of Mawr in the firelight, twined in the embrace of a lover whose face she could not make out; the woman's face was transported and resplendent in the red glare against the flaring shadows.

Eilonwy reached for her bauble, then, seeking a fixed point in the darkness that held her. Always still she kept it near her, although she’d put the crescent of Llyr away; it was the only thing she still had left from her old life, and the life before that. Eilonwy the wanted baby must have held that bauble, for one lost moment in time; and then lonely, angry Eilonwy of Spiral Castle had accounted it among her few friends; at for Eilonwy of Caer Dallben, companion of Taran, it had been a boon, a tool, even a prophesied weapon. 

Now, for Eilonwy of Caer Dathyl, High Queen of Prydain, the light that had always before come quickly to life in the golden sphere remained a fitful flare, a single, small, spinning snowflake in the bauble’s center that twirled but did not grow.

It had been thus ever since the moment, on the doorstep of Caer Dallben, when she had wished on her Fair Folk ring to sever her inherited link to the enchantments of Llyr. Her bauble had winked out at that very moment. At the time, she’d been so caught up in the whirl of events that she hadn’t had time to feel bad about it.

The bauble didn’t stay dark all the time. From time to time, when she reached for it, it flooded with the familiar golden light. That was part of why she still habitually carried it with her. But not tonight. The young Queen who lay curled by the fireside on piles of soft furs was no longer Eilonwy of Llyr, whoever else she might be. Uncomfortable, uncertain, she remained caught in the prism of becoming, and the bauble would not shine out.

She had grown so absorbed in her reflections that she had nearly forgotten, until she heard the cries of the men, victorious, approaching the fire, the ritual it was they were engaged in that Beltaine night.

And then Taran stood before her, coming to meet her in the pavilion. The others withdrew, giving them what privacy might be had, in this semi-public rite.

Taran’s face and chest were daubed in red paint – no, she realized, it wasn’t paint, but blood. He’d ridden out with the men to hunt deer for the feasting, and been anointed with the ichor of the fallen, as the Year King who carried the fate of all the people of the land on his shoulders.

Those shoulders had been stripped bare of all save a drape of tanned leather, and skintight leather breeches left little of Taran’s lower half to the imagination.

Taran dropped to his knees beside her. She could smell wine on his breath, and wondered if his head was swimming, too. 

“Eilonwy,” he said, gasping, and reached out to cup her face with a clumsy hand, his thumb pressing and dragging against her cheek. “My Queen. I love you, I’ve always loved you.”

Eilonwy was filled with panic, then. All gods, Llyr and Don, she should have looked more, when they lay close together at night, so that at least she might have been better prepared. She was several months married, but less experienced than many a new bride. And now they’d run out of time to procrastinate – to be the king and queen they’d claimed, they needed to render unto the earth this rite.

“I love you, too,” she said, swallowing hard and resolving to be brave.

They were kissing, kissing passionately, and that was all right, they’d done that before. The fire and fabric made a red dream, carrying her on beyond her fears. She knew what she was supposed to do next.

She loosened the ties on her finery, so that Taran could push the soft, clinging folds of fabric away from her body. Bared to the chill of the night, she shivered.

“Lie down,” he said, sounding hoarse, “and I’ll warm you.”

Naked now, she lay down on her back on the great heap of furs in the pavilion, and reached out her arms to him. He seemed larger than she’d expected, lowering himself down over her. 

She could remember when they’d been nearly the same size, when he’d been younger, before he’d come into his adult growth. Those days seemed far behind her, now. 

Wriggling against her, he slipped off his breeches.

At first, the feeling of his sex on hers was a pleasurable shock; it felt so good, so right, to have him touch her thus. But then, as he pressed onward, she found, to her frustration, that she was tensing up with pain.

She’d known, from the pressure she’d felt against her own sex when they’d lain together, clothed, in a state of desire, that he was more than modestly gifted; but now that she could feel the weight and heat of his staff, she stiffened with the fear that it would never fit, that she would be hurt by it.

He seemed not to realize it at first; but then he must have heard the change in her breathing, the pain in her voice. “Eilonwy?” Hovering over her, he held perfectly still, not moving a muscle.

She looked up into his open, honest, loving face. “I’m all right,” she said, letting out a gasping sigh and starting, at last, to relax. “But – can we try another way?”

He nodded, waiting for her to re-position his body to her liking, and she felt in that moment that she had never loved him more. 

“You lie down,” she said. “Let me work out how to get used to it. Then we may get on better.”

“Anything,” he said, “I – anything you want to, anything you need. All I’ve ever needed was you, just you.”

As he spoke, his voice low and gentle, coaxing and slow, she closed her eyes, and made her breathing just as slow and even, and relaxed her shoulders, and let out a long, soft sigh as she opened easily for him, sinking down to rest against the cradle of his hipbones.

“Oh,” she said, wondering. “Oh. There, now.”

And then there was less talking, for quite some while, as the stars spun slowly over the mountains of Prydain and Beltaine night gave way to the early hours of the next day. 

It was to be the final day of their Council. The new High King and High Queen greeted it, hours later, entwined in each other’s arms, their betrothal more than amply consummated, as the ancient rituals required, for the enrichment and renewal of the land. Neither had noticed the light of the bauble as it had shone, gleaming and bright, through the night, muted under the pile of Eilonwy’s discarded festival robe.


	8. Chapter 8

On reflection, Eilonwy found herself more pleased than not with how things had turned out over the three days of their High Council – although she still didn’t approve of Taran going behind her back, as he had done in the matter of revealing the rescued secrets of men that Gurgi had brought safely out of Annuvin. 

But, with how things had been going between them since Beltaine night, she was less and less inclined to make a fuss about it.

Taran had seemed happy and confident in the soft morning that had come after the Beltaine ritual, and his good mood and heightened confidence had fortuitously carried over through the oath-swearing that had followed later in the day, once all were recovered from their festival solemnities. 

Eilonwy herself had not enjoyed the coronation ceremony nearly so much as she had the activities of the previous night. She remained firm in her opinion that crowns and assorted finery were mostly good for making one uncomfortable, and was happy to pull away her gilding after the assembly had acknowledged her and Taran’s claims to be High King and Queen. Even the circlet they’d placed on her head had made her hair itch.

It had been decided, in the end, that the royal pair would make their summer’s progress, first to the Red Fallows, where they would oversee the first opening of the box of secret wisdom, and the beginning of the long work of years that would be needed there to reclaim the land; and then, with those that could manage it, would journey onward to Spiral Castle, to raze and cleanse its ruins before the onset of winter. Those who needed to travel homeward to tend to their harvests would do so, but all who intended to return to the High King’s court for the winter season were expected to send representatives, if they did not come to labor themselves.

Perhaps the Red Fallows were a sad place for a newlyweds’ journey, but Eilonwy found herself looking forward to the endeavor with all her heart. Coll’s grave was there, for the one thing; and it made her hope they might feel the old farmer and warrior’s presence, if they went back to where they’d last seen his warm face creased with his broad, knowing smile. She knew that Taran missed Coll very much – as she did herself.

She was happy, also, to have reason to not think, not at all, about the eventual plan to make their way to Spiral Castle.

Instead, dodging her husband’s attentions to pack up the things she’d need for their journey, she felt giddy as a girl. How strange it was, that she should think herself so far from girlhood, when after all she was scarcely so advanced in years! If so many things hadn’t kept happening in every moment of those years, she might, she realized, have felt quite a different person. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the thought, and did her best not to dwell on it.

Now that the seal, as it were, was broken on her marriage, she found herself swept up in the rush of Taran’s desire and passion. If she had been frustrated in the weeks before, longing for his touch and wondering what kept him from her, she could now make no complaint. When she came into a room where he was, his eyes kindled, and as soon as they were alone together, he had her in his arms, kissing her like she didn’t know what. She quite liked it.

After that first time, she’d found it easier to open her body without pain; and Taran was getting awfully good at getting her so interested she didn’t have to do much work to push past her fears. Her monthly courses had come on a week or so after Beltaine, and she felt half-sorry but mostly relieved when the familiar bleeding started.

Another benefit to the plan to summer in the Fallows was, that she could make excellent arguments as to why she should work, and not have to dabble about with court ladies. “You’ll need every hand you have,” she said to Taran, “and Coll taught me farming, too – admittedly, not for as long as you, but still. We can’t afford to waste my whole summer with embroidery and gossiping.”

“We’ll need to keep an eye on the wellbeing of the court, though, even while we travel,” Taran argued. “You were the first one who pointed that out! I don’t want to come back to a war over lovers’ spats.”

“Keep them too busy for fighting and love-drama, then,” Eilonwy suggested. “I know I’d prefer to be.”

Taran laughed at that, and kissed her as punctuation to his next several clauses. “Very well, my Queen, my wife, my love. We’ll make sure you have breeches, boots, and gloves in good leather, so that you won’t tear your pretty hands when you turn them again to earth-tilling. How long has it been since you plowed a field?”

“Too many springs,” she said, kissing him back with enthusiasm. “Too many summers. And, for that matter, too many harvests. Too many seasons gone, all together.”

“You should have expected,” he said, “that being my queen would involve its share of farming.”

“Indeed,” she teased, “so I’d hoped, when I agreed some time ago to wed an Assistant Pig-Keeper.”

*

Any heaviness in Taran’s heart at returning to the Red Fallows, where he had mourned so many lost comrades and felt so keenly the bite of grief, was lessened by the clamor and bustle of the cavalcade that had wound out from Caer Dathyl. 

Some remained, to care for the ruins and continue the work of shifting the fallen citadel’s stones. Dwyvach Weaver-Woman said that she’d had her fill of traveling, and would stay in the rebuilt house where she meant to rest her bones; and the child Gwenlliant remained with her, a helpful hand in equal need of steady, attentive care. Taran’s steward, Huw, would watch over the labors of all while the king and queen were away.

Cooks and cattle-drovers, palanquins and falcons, sounds of swords from impromptu practice-rings and strummings of lutes from favored musicians, all followed in the High King’s party. Many of the attendees at the High Council were coming in person to begin the labor of the restoration of the fallows, and to take part in the first unveiling of the lost knowledge of Prydain. And, once they arrived at the place of the Red Fallows, the throng only continued to swell.

Taran led them all to the place where the Hills of Bran-Galedd could start to be seen rising away in the distance, and there they pitched a large and lasting encampment, that would remain for the summer and autumn as a temporary center for their traveling court.

The first night after they made the Fallows, the young High Queen and High King went together to the foothills, to visit a hard-built mound of honor.

“He would have been so proud of you,” Eilonwy hiccuped through her own sobs, wiping away Taran’s tears.

“I miss him so much,” Taran managed to choke out, and then spoke no more for a long while. Eilonwy sat close to him, holding his hand, and after a time nestled in to put her head on his shoulder. Melynlas and Lluagor drifted patiently nearby, cropping the sparse grass, waiting for their people to be ready to head back to the camp, understanding their need to pay respects to a beloved, dearly departed farmer, warrior, and true grower of turnips. 

*

The day after the procession had arrived and established camp, it was time for Taran to open the metal coffer that he and Gurgi had carried out of the fall of Annuvin.

He lifted the latch on the little box, took out the scraps of paper inside, and spread them, fanned out, in his hands.

“All may come, in turn, in the days to come, to a table that I shall cause to have set up here, in this hallowed place, to read and learn these secrets. And,” he added, “Let us take care to set aside any knowledge that may help us in our present endeavor to enrich and restore this land of the Red Fallows, for the labor is much, and any quicker methods would be most welcome!”

With a courtly gesture, Taran ushered Queen Penardun, the most senior and high-placed personage present, to take the box and touch the papers that he’d replaced within it.

She withdrew a single piece, holding it up in a hand that showed, as her face did not, her true age. “It says,” she read aloud, slowly and thoughtfully, “to grow your crops in a system of three divided fields. In the autumn, plant you one with winter wheat or rye. In the second, you may grow peas, lentils, or beans. Leave the third fallow, and let your beasts graze there as they will. Change the use of each field yearly, so that each can recover in turn, and all will give you the greatest yield when planted.”

A sigh, as of a single voice, went up from the assembled watchers. 

Then it was Taran’s turn. The coffer that he had carried for so long had become strange to him in that heightened moment, and he fumbled to draw out a single page. His voice shook as he read it out: “Let the wind and the water turn your mills and querns, to spare your own strength and increase your yield. Saw wood and stone with water-mills, or use the wind to grind your grain with circled sails.” 

He remembered the days he had spent with Llonio Son of Llonwen at his strange farmstead by Small Avren, and the quern they had fashioned together, and he had to swallow hard to contain the upswell of his heart.

Eilonwy took the coffer from his clammy hands, and read aloud in her clear, firm voice, “In the same way that you build a water-wheel to harness a river, you may, through reversed use, drain even the deepest cave or mine.”

Eilonwy handed the box next to Hevydd the Smith, who plucked another thin page in his meaty, powerful hands. “Children grow best,” he read aloud, gruff as always, “when treated with kindness. Beat a child, and you break a spirit, perhaps for good, and may do more harm than you know.”

Sniffing audibly with emotion, Hevydd handed the coffer to King Smoit. The red-bearded cantrev king laughed aloud when he had made out the words on the paper in his meaty hand: “When you ferment grain for beer, take the foam that forms in the surface and use it to bake your bread. Have you more secrets for my cooks in that box, my boy? I’ll take it! A kingly secret, indeed!”

Kai son of Keredic, former steward of Fflewddur Flam and new-made king of his northern realm, now in his own right, read out: “When eyesight grows dim, grind glass or crystal into a dome to form a lens. Wear your lenses daily, or use them to look out at the stars, or down at the world.”

Evnissyen of Madoc took out another slip of paper. “To separate metals, extracting gold or silver, heat the metal to liquid, then pour into cold water. Smelt you then these granules together with salt, and gold will separate from silver, or silver from lead.”

Other voices rose and fell: Old Pen-Llarcau’s man, lords Gast and Goryon the one after the other, and Enid of Mawr, Ynawc of Mona and Gwythyr of Rheged, each in their turn.

“Truly,” marveled Llassar, at last, “this treasure of yours was not over-promised, Taran King. But it will be a great labor, to sort and learn all of these various pages, the one from the other, so that those who can use these secrets will find them.”

“Yes,” Taran agreed. “Still, we have plenty of time, and many hands to lighten the task. Son of Drudwas, will you take the task of sorting and ordering the contents of this coffer? Create a book for us, to be held here for the access of all in our alliance. We trust your wits, and your careful attention, in this.”

“I should be glad to accept that charge, sire,” the young man said with a deep bow. 

And so it was decided, and the great task of regaining the lost secrets of Prydain undertaken. Many hands proved eager indeed to help in Llassar’s labors, and he supervised all with imperturbable good will.


	9. Chapter 9

In truth, Eilonwy’s proposed solution to interpersonal problems in this their temporary summer court was the best one, Taran soon realized; for there was much work to be done, and it was easy to separate hotheads and fill hands that grasped too quickly for sword-hilts and quarrelsome words. 

In the first few weeks, Taran suspected that many had been too tired to do much more than fall with gratitude into pallets and hammocks at each day’s ending. Before aught could be planted, the land of the Red Fallows needed to be restored, and that labor would not be quickly finished. 

Llassar’s teams of scribes and sorters had already turned up valuable secrets to lighten the laborers’ toil. Only a day or so after they’d first arrived, the High King had already sent Hevydd the Smith riding back with a great wagon and an ox team to Caer Dathyl; for Llassar had learned that limestone, as found in the northern mountains and of which the citadel’s rubble provided an ample store, could be used to treat unyielding soil.

On the instructions of other pages found by Llassar, they planned and dug a series of linear ditches around their proposed fields, with a circular bank and ditch at the perimeter; this, Llassar had read, would serve to ease the eventual task of irrigating the crops planted there.

Llassar had also found plans for different styles of plows, with iron-tipped plowshares that could till the heaviest soils, or wheels to move them, that could be harnessed alike to man or beast for easiest use. Taran wished they had such implements already constructed, for the task of breaking the hard ground of the Fallows was punishingly difficult.

Other techniques they soon learned, as the people worked together to learn and sort the lost secrets of their arts and sciences. For, while many pertained to metalworking, and star-reading, and the treatment of sickness and injury, and the creation of beautiful things of gold and silver, stone and glass, most spoke of growing things, and the enrichment of the earth; and that knowledge, they could immediately apply. 

Beside the barrow of Coll Son of Collfrewr Taran caused structures to be built for the housing of bees, remembering Coll’s wish to be always surrounded by their drowsy buzzing. It was too late in the summer to introduce a new hive, but all would be ready come the following spring, and the renewed insect life would help to pollinate the first year’s plantings in the Fallows.

While it would be some years yet before the Fallows yielded a full harvest, Taran could see it in his heart to hope that they could, in fact, be made to do so.

Still, while their toil was great, Taran found his heart was often light. Eilonwy seemed merry and free from care, grubbing beside other men and women at concrete, achievable tasks, stretching and strengthening her body. It had been weeks since she’d worn a robe or circlet. She was often tired at the end of the day, as were they all, but her moods had mellowed and steadied, and Taran was glad indeed to see her so content.

That ease made it increasingly easy for him to provide for her pleasure in his husbandly role; a thing he was coming to realize was important, and not just alternately fun and frightening. They slept well together in their rough tent and bedroll, on most nights after vigorous and enthusiastic lovemaking, and rose each morning in the cool summer light to stretch and eat and return to their work.

Some of the folk he’d brought down with them from the mountains took well to the work at the Red Fallows, while others did not. Enid of Mawr and Evnissyen of Madoc came close to blows over a dispute concerning the accuracy of a boundary measurement, with new techniques producing different answers in Enid’s hands than old one’s had in Evnissyen’s; and Taran kept having to shame Lord Gast the Generous back out into the fields, and away from the tent where the cantrev lord kept a comfortable couch.

Gwythyr of Rheged, in contrast, took to the task of tilling the packed earth soberly and methodically, working each foot of land entrusted to him until it was thoroughly loosened, turned, and turned again, with neat, straight irrigation ditches and even slopes for good soil drainage. Taran came to thank Llyr, Belin, and all the fates for the cantrev lord’s steady attention and regular work.

When Hevydd the Smith returned from Caer Dathyl with wagonloads of pale mountain stone, many worked together to unload it. Then great kilns they built in which to heat it, and created a store of quicklime. Ground into a powder, the quicklime, added to water, was then spread by careful hands over the once blood-stained ground.

Hevydd himself hastened to the place where Llassar’s researchers worked, hungry for any new information they’d collected about improved techniques for refining and forging metals. (“Several pages’ worth, I do believe,” Eilonwy had helpfully informed him.)

Llassar was visibly excited when he burst into Taran and Eilonwy’s tent of an evening, waving a scrap of paper in one clenched and ink-stained hand. “Taran King! Taran King! This will be our saving! I have found the most wonderful knowledge about the raising of waters from the earth!”

Starting upward from where he’d lain curled in Eilonwy’s lap on their couch, Taran at first thought only that Llassar was beside himself, and the young king’s attention initially was wholly fixed on calming the shouting youth. It was only when Eilonwy, insisting on being handed the relevant page, gasped as well, and looked up at him with starry eyes, that Taran truly realized what an extraordinary thing it was they’d found, and how much it could enable them to do.

The closely-written page gave instructions on creating a self-drawing well, needing only a smooth pipe pounded into the place where water was known to pass underground. Since they’d made camp in the Red Fallows, Taran’s people had been transporting their water some distance from a neighboring creek, a tedious prospect, and unhelpful for farming. If they could draw up water from the land nearer the newly-dug fields, how much work would be spared them.

Thinking of it, Taran found himself just as breathless as his young friend and queen both were. “Llassar,” he said, lightheaded and laughing, “you’re a genius!”

The youth colored. “Not a genius; I only found this knowledge, but made no real discovery.”

“It will serve us the same either way,” Taran said, “and I, for one, am thankful for your sharp eyes.”

*

As the summer wore on, the land started, slowly, painfully, to change. The Red Fallows did not blossom, not yet; indeed, the appearance of the sward was more muddy than anything else. But it had been tilled, treated, fertilized, and seeded with restorative plants like sweet clover; and as the irrigation system came together, it grew clearer to the perceiver how the fields might eventually be brought to a rich yield.

As the land and the season changed, so too did Taran’s company. 

King Smoit was, to both men’s regret, among the first to depart from the Red Fallows, riding out with his lords Gast and Goryon for his lands in the south. “I have been away too long from Cantrev Cadiffor,” the red-bearded old warrior admitted with a sigh, “and need to tend to my own store before the winter comes. You’ll be all right, my boy,” he added, clapping the visibly crestfallen Taran on the shoulder. “Just keep your heart and your hopes high, and we’ll see each other again as soon as may be.”

Ynawc of Mona declared to Taran that he would ride out with King Smoit, and pay his respects to the mound of honor near Smoit’s castle where the body of young King Rhun rested.

Queen Penardun, too, left the Red Fallows at this time. She told Taran, not ungently, “Do not expect me to return soon to Caer Dathyl. You have my allegiance and support, but despite all you may do, for me that city will only ever be a place of grief and shame. May your court be the merrier without me. I shall send representatives in the first bloom of spring to work and learn again in this land of the Red Fallows.”

But, as these old and new faces departed, other arrivals came to gladden Taran’s heart. During the first weeks of harvest time, the farmer Aeddan and his wife Alarca came to visit the encampment at the Fallows, and see their friends who had grown so great.

“Aeddan!” Taran exclaimed, when the good farmer was escorted to his tent. “How come you here? What of your own farm? I did not think to see you for a season, at least!”

“So you should not have done,” Aeddan said. “But King Smoit sent men to reap my fields and take in my harvest, and told me to come and visit you here, before you rode north again for the winter, and the journey was too long for we humble wayfarers. It is by his generosity, as one friend to another, that we have been able to join you here.”

“We wanted to congratulate you in person,” Alarca said, extending her arms to the young King in a motherly gesture that touched his heart deeply. “On your wedding, and your victory, and on having finally found the destiny that once you sought. Wanderer no longer; now all hearths in Prydain are yours to command.”

“None could offer such hospitality as yours once did,” Taran told her, gratefully accepting the embrace. “Let me go and find Eilonwy, my wife. I would you all were better friends.”

“Certainly,” the farmwife said, pinching his coloring cheek. “I see you’re not so long-married to be able to speak of your love without a blush. That’s good. May your heart remain so sweetly open for many years to come.”

“With all my heart I wish it,” Taran said, and then ducked out of the tent, calling Eilonwy’s name.

*

Aeddan and Alarca could not remain for as long as Taran might have desired, but the days they spent marveling over his works and discoveries were warm and sunlit in his memory even after the couple had taken their leave to return to their farm in the south.

Eventually Taran and Eilonwy themselves were oathbound to leave the happy toil they’d found together that summer in the Red Fallows. Lord Teirynyon’s request for aid with the fouled lands around the ruins of Spiral Castle still pressed them, demanding to be honored before the beginning of winter.

More members of their party remained behind when they rode out, including the last of Taran’s old compatriots from the Free Commots, Hevydd the Smith and Llassar Son of Drudwas. 

Llassar was needed to superintend, care for, and start duplicating the great Book that had been compiled and arranged over the past season, for the most part by the young shepherd himself, with great care and toil.

Hevydd, also, remained to study the secrets, albeit in a more practical and hands-on way; he had begun constructing small models of the more complex machines described in the contents of Gurgi’s rescued coffer, and was deeply immersed in the works of his experimental forge and laboratory on the grounds of the Fallows.

“We’ll let you know what we come up with, no matter,” Hevydd said, brushing aside Taran’s offers of relocation to new works in Caer Dathyl. “I’ve sent word to my last prentice to keep my forge in the Free Commots, as long as she works it well. I mean to stay right where I am, for the present moment. This work may be the greatest I will ever have the chance to do, in all my lifetime.”

The group that rode southward into the deepening forest that surrounded the former Spiral Castle was a smaller one by far than the throng that had teemed in the busiest days of the summer’s work on the Fallows. Few of their oldest friends remained to accompany them on this dark and difficult task.

Eilonwy’s mind grew heavier with foreboding the closer they drew to the place where the ruins of Spiral Castle lay. She had passed by the region before, in the adventures she’d had with Taran and their companions, crisscrossing the land of Prydain; but never had she let herself think of the shattered stones and ruined rooms that must have been piled there. 

She’d left Spiral Castle firmly behind her, run off as soon as the chance had come, and not regretted it for a second.

Achren had intruded on Eilonwy’s life several times more after she’d made her escape; but at least in the shelter of Caer Dallben, Eilonwy knew herself at home, valued, important, not a toy or slave for the cruel and haughty Queen. Coll and Dallben had held the power of Achren in check, to the girl’s way of thinking, and so Achren’s presence in the farmhouse had been bearable. Spiral Castle, though … that, she feared, might be something else again. 

She slid her eyes sideways to look at Taran, where he rode beside her, his dark traveling clothes a contrast to Melynlas’ light coat. Spiral Castle was where they’d met for the first time. But it was not a place of happy memories, an anniversary they could speak of or laugh about – despite how genuinely funny Taran’s bewilderment had often truly been. Spiral Castle held only memories of pain, for her, pain and then at last a final desperate desire for escape. She hadn’t learned to really know Taran’s good heart for some time after their flight.

“You know we’re counting on you,” he said, noticing her gaze. “Eilonwy, we’ll need you to help us figure out what needs to be done. I know you gave up your enchantments, but you lived in Spiral Castle. If you can – please, help us learn how to drive the shadows away from these lands for good.”

“I’ll try,” she answered.

He smiled gently. “That’s all anyone can ask for,” he told her. But she didn’t know how she was ever going to be able to repay the trust in his soft eyes, not when the very thought of the place made her heart turn to stone in her chest.


	10. Chapter 10

Stone was indeed the predominant element to be seen, when at last the pared-down group that still accompanied King Taran and Queen Eilonwy arrived at the glade where hulked the ruined heap that had once been Spiral Castle. Dark pines cast cool shadows all around them, and the roughly-hewn boulders that had formed the bones of the great fortress lay scattered about like giants’ bones.

And oh, the evil aura of the place hung about them like a shroud. Eilonwy thought that she could almost feel it, heavy and damp against her skin like a chilly mist. More than a ruin, Spiral Castle was a center of dark history, a record of blood and pain incised in the very materials that had made it.

Teirnyon said from behind them. “Do you see, now, why I came to beg the boon of your aid?”

“This keep was older than your castle at Caer Dathyl, sire,” said Gwythyr of Rheged, coming up beside Taran and Eilonwy as they stood at the edge of their new camp, surveying the daunting scene. “You can tell by the way the stones are cut. Who built Spiral Castle?”

“I never knew,” Eilonwy said, and looked questioningly over at Taran.

He shook his head, looking tired.“If Prince Gwydion knew, he never told us.”

Eilonwy mused aloud, “It must have been someone very long ago, indeed. For we found Dyrnwyn here, buried with a great lord or king; and Gwydion said it had been lost for so long that even the legend of the sword had been nearly forgotten.”

Taran reached down to brush the hilt of the black sword where it hung sheathed at his side. Without its former powers, it was no more than a blade, now, though a blade of worth. Taran had said that its like could not be made in Prydain now – though, perhaps, with the work they had left in motion in the Red Fallows, swords might one day be forged again to challenge Dyrnwyn.

Gwythyr went on, “Sire, we might begin by getting teams of men, horses, oxen, whatever, to straighten out some of these stones, and stabilize the situation a bit. Right now, put a foot out of place, and the whole mess might come down on your head. 

“Yes,” Taran said, sighing. “There’s a great deal to be done. Do you think,” he added, turning back again to Eilonwy, “that the old king’s burial chamber, down under the castle, might still be intact? It seemed to be coming down all around us, when we fled with Dyrnwyn. Are the king’s bones, and those of his warriors, and their treasures, all lost under this great mound of fallen stones? If so, perhaps we might leave a proper barrow, when we depart, to mark where they rest.” 

“I should think they’re broken into dust and bits, the bones and the gold alike,” Eilonwy answered. “It was the center of the destruction of Spiral Castle. I had no idea, when I grabbed Dyrnwyn from the king’s bier, that it would do any such thing. Not that I was exactly sorry, mind you. But I’m quite certain that the castle fell apart at the seams directly when I took the sword out from under its foundations. So wouldn’t that chamber be the worst damaged of all?”

“Other parts of the castle,” she added thoughtfully, “may be less so. We shall have to see.”

*

Trees had to be cut down to create an open space for their fires and tents, and for the space of a day or so, there was much to do. Then, once workers had stabilized the greatest stones, creating safe walkways propped up with timbers hewn from the surrounding forest and braced with thick ropes, it was time for someone to breach the ruins, and see what the situation looked like from the outside.

There was no question in Eilonwy’s mind that it was to be her.

No one expected her to meet more danger within the abandoned ruin than unstable structures, and in such a situation, a lesser weight of bodies and jarring of footsteps could only be for the best. 

Nevertheless, Taran had protested against it.

“Wait a while,” he argued, “and then many man may enter together. I, at least, could go with you.”

“No. The season is too far gone, and it will be winter if we wait long. I’ll be all right, dear Assistant Pig-Keeper,” she said, and shut his mouth with a firm kiss. “I know my way through this labyrinth. Or, at least, I used to. You stay out here and be King, and manage the forestry crews. I’m going in, to see what I can learn. I’ll come back again. I promise.”

Brave words; but her heart had quailed when she made to enter the remaining walls and intact rooms of Spiral Castle, down in between the great chunks of glooming stone.

She went alone. 

The Great Hall of the castle remained somewhat intact, though the roof was now open to the clouded sky, and withered leaves were gathered in the corners amongst the weather-worn remnants of tapestries and fragmented furnishings. 

From that open space, she could see that many of the interior rooms, the oldest of the keep, were still standing. Achren’s rooms had been on the other side of the castle from the hall, in what looked to be the most intact part of Spiral Castle remaining.

Eilonwy shuddered. 

Too well she recollected the way to Achren’s personal suite. Often she had been dragged there, by her hair or her ears, or thrown down there from some brutish warrior’s shoulder. Achren had brought Eilonwy to her rooms to teach her, to interrogate her, and to punish her.

The problem was, she didn’t have a clear idea at all of what she might be looking for. Taran had charged her with dispelling the evil aura of this terrible place. The only thing she could think to do was to worm her way in to where she suspected the core of the trouble might lie. 

Achren’s rooms, she feared, must be the first stop on her return inspection. 

And so Eilonwy made her way through the hall, past the dais, and on into the once-familiar depths.

Once she was inside, and the last light of the day had faded behind her, her breath came fast, and her heart raced. Without the light of her still-unreliable bauble, the piled stones of Spiral Castle were awfully dark and grim and grey. She felt sick to her stomach, and had to stop for a moment in a half-exposed corridor to press a hand to her mouth as bile rose in her throat.

But then she went on again, wending her way through the maze that was left of Spiral Castle, looking for the one room she had previously always been most keen to avoid.

She had to find the answer to this riddle; there was no one else who had a chance of discovering it.

First there was an antechamber, which Achren sometimes used for secret meetings that she didn’t want other people to know about; and then there was a dressing-room, that held her gowns and her great polished silver mirror; but her jewels were kept in coffers in her workroom, alongside her books of enchantment, herbs, and other tools for focusing her spells, and that workroom was the innermost of all, beyond even her bedchamber.

There had used to be a staircase leading up to a loft, where Achren had observed the stars and conducted rituals; but as Eilonwy moved through the antechamber, where it began, she saw that the upper structure had crumbled when Spiral Castle had shaken itself apart, shearing away to topple down into the courtyard below. Through a gap in the dense stonework, she could see a scrap of pale grey sky.

The mirror in Achren’s dressing-room showed the effects of the years that had passed since the destruction of the enchantress’s reign. It had grown grimy and clouded, without any care or cleaning. 

Through a heavy door, Eilonwy could glimpse Achren’s great bed where it stood, threatening and looming, in the next room, festooned with decaying draperies of dusty red. She went through to the bed, and, taking up the rotting bedspread, began fashioning a makeshift bag.

So much of Achren was left here that she didn’t know what to bring out; and so she meant to bring out the lot of it, knot it up in the blankets and drag it out into the waning autumn sunlight: all of Achren’s books and bangles, stones and jewels, wands and mirrors. 

The great mirror she could not shift, and so she left it there. They would have to come back to this room anyway, to deal with the destruction of the massive bed, the oaken shelves and wardrobes that had held the former queen’s effects. Those things were too large for Eilonwy to handle all by herself.

But she gathered together Achren’s robes, jewels, papers, cosmetics, knives, traps, and inks, and, heavily burdened now, made to pull them out behind her, as she left those dread rooms for what, she feared, was not to be the last time.

*

Through the long day when Eilonwy remained entombed in the darkness of Spiral Castle, Taran did his best to spend himself in work. He felt sick at heart, that she had entered that place without him; but, although he had tried, he had not been able to gainsay her, and so he had been left behind to fret in her absence.

At least, there remained more than enough to be done to keep him occupied.

They’d found a pooling stream, evidently polluted by its path through the bowels of the ruins, and set to work diverting the water through cleaner ground. That change, he hoped, would do something to dispel the reek of mouldering death that hung about the place. Otherwise, he feared there was nothing for it but to wait for Eilonwy’s return.

Eventually, word came that she had come up again. Hastening, he laid down his tools and made way rapidly to find her.

When he came upon his Queen, she was sitting hunched by one of the campfires with a full bowl of stew held in a listless, motionless hand. He was shocked to notice how pale and worn she looked, seeming gripped by a weariness that went all the way down to her bones. He was used to her being such a vivid presence that it alarmed him to see her thus. 

He dropped down to sit beside her, reaching out a supporting arm. “Eilonwy …”

She blinked at him, then seemed to focus. “Oh. Taran. Hullo.” She blinked again, long lashes sweeping down against her still-summer-freckled cheeks.

“Here,” he urged her, “you’ve not finished your food. Let’s eat. And you can tell me about how it went, in there.” 

She picked up her dish again and took a few mouthfuls, and he felt heartened to have won so much in response. She hadn’t gone so far from him as his jealous heart had at first feared.

“Well,” she said at last, once she’d managed to get down a little food, “I suppose it was unexciting enough. I found Achren’s chambers. They look as if she’d just left them, except for all the dust and rubble. It gave me the most horrible sense that she might still be there, too, and come up behind me, and grab me by the hair and drag me off to – anyway, nothing of the sort happened, of course. I didn’t even spot any mice. Plenty of spiders, though.”

She nudged her foot against a dark, knobby bundle that had lain hidden at her feet, and it clanked ominously. He said, warily, “Is that … ”

“Everything I found in Achren’s room? Of course. I figured, either it’s the source of the problem, or it can show me what to do to let this poor tortured land have rest. And I didn’t want to touch any of it there, not in her rooms, with all the stones and their bloodstains watching me … ”

Taran watched in horror as Eilonwy closed her eyes, wracked by what horrors he didn’t know, her hands flown up to fan out over her face. He didn’t dare touch her, but he said her name, and she seemed to respond to the sound of his voice. He felt sick with helplessness. 

“I shouldn’t have let you go in there alone,” he said, trying not to let his grief and anger bleed through in his tone, but stay level-voiced and calm, for her sake. “We left Spiral Castle together; we ought to have breeched those secret places together, too, just as we did the old king’s barrow long ago.”


	11. Chapter 11

Eilonwy slept but poorly the night after she’d gone alone into the ruins of Spiral Castle, crying out and twisting in Taran’s arms as nightmares gripped her. He did what he could to hold and soothe her, and when she woke sobbing, panting, wild-eyed, he dodged her flailing fists and spoke soft words of comfort until she collapsed back down again into their bedding.

Taran himself rested little better. It tore at his heart, to be able to do so little to shield or protect her. Once again, as it had done before, the threat of her dark secrets and tragic history reached out to pluck Eilonwy from him. Though he held her in his arms, still it seemed to him that shadows loomed threateningly all around them. 

And, even when the morning came, wan and pale but brightening, he didn’t know what to do to lessen her pain.

“Where did you sleep, Eilonwy, when you lived here, before?” he whispered softly into her hair, as they lay together for a quiet moment in the stillness of the dawn.

“Not in my room, not if I could help it,” she murmured in response. “In the cells, or the horse stalls, or the secret passages under the castle, or in the kitchens by the hearth where it was warm, in the winter. If I slept in my room, Achren could find me. If I could delay her for awhile, I had a better chance of hiding from her all together.” 

“It was better,” she said, yawning, drifting into reminiscence, “to come at her once she’d been settled in her workroom for some time. Then, she’d mostly answer my questions, as long as I wasn’t a bother. Unless she wanted me to do something horrible with my magic,” she added, and Taran pressed her no further. He wanted to know no more of Achren’s magics than he already did, though he feared he might have to learn, in order to keep his oath and his kingship.

*

In the daylight, they opened the threatening bundle that Eilonwy had brought out of Achren’s rooms. Spread out over the withered autumn grass, Achren’s hoard glittered fearsomely.

“What are we to do with it?” Teirnyon asked, voice squeaking fearfully. “Perchance it may be the source of this place’s unhappiness. Take these things away from here, and the land may be restored more readily.”

“Some of it we can burn, or bury,” Eilonwy said, nudging a pile of rich fabrics with a diffident toe. “The metal pieces I think we should melt down. Taran, I’m not sure what’s to be done about the jewels, and her other stones and crystals. I’m sure they hold power. Can we break them, somehow?”

“Perhaps we could,” Taran mused aloud, “but I wouldn’t want to bet much on it. And, besides, breaking these stones could very well be harmful to whoever struck the blow, or those around him, if the evil curses contained within should strike back again.”

“Bury them?” Gwythyr suggested thoughtfully. “We might pile up a cairn of stone, to keep them hid.”

“To mark them for thieves, rather,” sneered the lady Enid. “You can’t get rid of this sort of problem by burying it, man!”

“She’s right about that, at least,” Eilonwy said, “but Gwythyr might be closer to the mark, when all’s done. What if we give them, not to the earth, but to the sea? Cast them into the river,” she added, forestalling anticipated objections, “and we run the same risk as with burying them: that the crystals and gems could be found, and used for ill. But the sea … the sea, as I well know, can eat and hold as many secrets as a person could have, and more. Whole countries, and all their history, can vanish, just like that, beneath the sea.”

Taran knew, then, that she was thinking, as was he, of the lost Caer Colur, and the other, older, sunken lands of Llyr that now lay deep under the waves.

“It will be a winter, and maybe more, before you and I can ride to the shore of the sea,” Taran said softly, shifting to stand nearer her, and putting his hand on her shoulder. “Do we dare trust this mission to another messenger? I do not think so. We will have to carry them back with us, to Caer Dathyl, and keep them safely for the space of at least a season. Can we manage this?”

“We shall have to,” Eilonwy answered. “We can shut them away behind metal and lead, lock and key, bar and vault. That’s the best we’re going to be able to do, for now at least.”

*

They lit a great fire that afternoon, contained by the piled stones of the fallen castle so that it could not spark and catch in the nearby autumn forest. The rich colored textiles went up in a flash; the metal pieces, contained in crucibles at the heart of the coals, lost their shape and went back to molten fluid. Eilonwy had painstakingly pried the stones out of each of Achren’s necklaces and diadems, and those Taran helped her to seal in a soldered coffer of lead. Crews of men had dragged out the remains of furnishings, and the huge mirror, and laid them on the flames.

On one matter alone Eilonwy was hesitant, the cold and vengeful spirit that had driven her through this trial wavering; and, ironically, it concerned the easiest of all of Achren’s things to destroy. These were loose papers and bound books, containing Eilonwy knew not what secrets, many written in a code that she could not, as of yet, make sense of; and was she going to let them pass out of her hands and send them to the fire unread?

She would be able to make no use of Achren’s secrets of enchantment, she feared, especially as she was now, without the gifts of her foremothers behind her. But what else could the former Queen’s books and papers contain? Secrets of politics, the earth and the stars, poisons and remedies, those might be of use to someone, if she could read them out. 

And, she wondered with a heart half-hopeful and half-fearful, could any record of herself, or her people, be contained therein? She didn’t even know her father’s name. Could Achren have written down her reasons for pursuing the last baby survivor of the House of Llyr, and how Eilonwy had come into her clutches? Even if Achren hadn’t found out anything about her father, if she only knew where the enchantress had found her, perhaps she could discover something of his fate, as Taran had come by happy chance to learn of that of her poor mother, the lost Princess Angharad.

As dusk fell over the pyre, Eilonwy fell back, surreptitiously wrapping the stack of tomes and sheafs in her cloak. Knowing that Taran would be occupied monitoring the fire, she took them out again with no fear once she reached the sanctuary of their tent. Carefully wrapping them in her smallclothes, she stuffed them down deep at the bottom of her laundry bag, confident that Taran would never find them there. She’d have to make sure to take them out again before handing her things over to be washed, that was all.

Quickly and quietly, she slipped back to the side of the dwindling fire, and went to stand at Taran’s side as the moon rose, luminous and spectral, over the cairn of Achren’s ambitions, and the unknown king who had died deep under the earth there so very long ago.

*

When King Taran and Queen Eilonwy returned to Caer Dathyl, they were amazed at how much the castle had been transformed in their absence. Laborers and artisans had labored throughout the summer to restore the stones of the citadel, resurrecting white and golden towers to once more compete with the neighboring mountain peaks.

A soaring roof covered the Great Hall again, and the space, though high and vast, was warm with fires and bright with the light of many waxen tapers, lending the air a sweet savor.

The red weavings that had served as temporary shelter now draped the walls with warmth; and, hanging above them, Dwyvach had hung the tapestry of the King’s Legend, that had been woven on the looms of the fates, with the threads left unfinished and uncut bundled in great bunches off to the one side, trailing down the white stones like many-colored ivy.

Eilonwy saw Taran visibly relax as they rode through the citadel walls, and marveled that he had so readily come to feel at home there, as she still did not feel herself to truly be. He looked happy, and at home.

But why should he not, after all, she reflected, turning in turn on herself as the natural next target in line for a dressing-down. What was the matter with her, that she couldn’t be happy for her husband, the man she was supposed to love, the one she’d given up paradise to marry? Didn’t he deserve to feel every bit at home, here in this place that his loyalty and goodwill had caused to be rebuilt, amid the growing nexus of a strong and steady kingdom, a secured and promising future? 

It was Taran’s leadership that they all had to thank for the peace and cooperation that had strengthened and enriched them all through the last seasons, and now sent them into winter well-stocked and stored. She ought to be massively proud of him.

She was proud of him, Eilonwy told herself firmly. He’d come so far from the days when he’d fumbled matters out of boyish insecurity or untested, false haste. She was just … in poor spirits. It didn’t have to mean anything, not at all. Not if she didn’t want it to. 

She felt herself all sour, in body, mind, and disposition, and it contrasted bitterly with the sweet savor Taran found in this return. 

As they left the horses behind with grooms, men and women came out to gather around Taran, jostling for his attention. Eilonwy saw his eyes widen for a moment, and then watched as he settled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and opened his heart to their voices and needs.

She left him to it. Better him than her, to face that throng. And, besides, she had something else to see to, and it would be better to get to it before Taran could catch wind of what she was up to and start interfering with her plans.

The trouble was, retrieving her hidden stash of Achren’s papers meant going along with the womenfolk to unpack and start cleaning and putting away all the yards and yards of goods and such stuff. The Queen’s part in those tasks would seem natural enough, and she didn’t fear questioning. But it really wasn’t the company she would have chosen.

Her heart sank as the heat and soap smells of the laundry seemed to engulf her, the women’s chatter high and quiet and maddening, like the twittering of distant and possibly unfriendly birds. Eilonwy clutched tight to the bundle of fabric and paper, as if it could protect her from this threat she could never seem to explain, to Taran or to anyone.

Caer Dathyl resembled the castle she had visited as a girl, more than the ruin where she had camped in the spring. When they showed her the restored Queen’s Solar, with real glass panels to catch even the winter sun, she remembered sitting there as a frustrated little girl, worrying about Taran and Gwydion and what was to become of her, after Gwydion’s defeat of the Horned King. And now, she was to be the mistress there. 

At least it gave her a good place to conceal her papers. There was a great chest with a heavy lock tucked away in an alcove, and there she deposited her hoard for later examination and study.

Then, she let herself be taken off to the royal chambers, where she submitted to having her hair washed and dressed, her body bathed and oiled with perfumes, and allowed her attendants to dress her in bright robes and shining ornaments for a festival meal. Perhaps she could use this gaudy display as an effective camouflage. It might have some uses, after all.


	12. Chapter 12

Taran was already seated at the high table in the Great Hall when Eilonwy made her way back to his side. “My Queen!” he said with a ready smile, raising his goblet of wine in a gesture of honor. “You look as beautiful as a dream.”

“Fine feathers,” she shot back, but he shook his head and smiled.

“Fair garments may set off your beauty,” he said, “but it remains true as gold, even when all around you is grey and bleak. You’ve always been a star in the darkness, Eilonwy.”

“Lovely. And, speaking of poetic imagery, your highness,” put in Enid of Mawr, leaning in from where she sat to Taran’s lefthand side, “we’ve been having a bit of a debate. What shall be the flag and device of the new High King? Your husband, here, has already said that he doesn’t intend to keep flying the Golden Sunburst of Don.”

“Why not the banner of the White Pig?” Evnissyen offered with a mocking drawl. “If I remember rightly, that was the pig-keeper’s device when he first came here as one of Gwydion’s war leaders.”

“That was not, in fact, the first time Taran and I came here,” Eilonwy noted, lightly, almost absentmindedly, with only a little frost for bite. “The first time, he’d just rescued me from the enchantress Achren, leveled Spiral Castle, and handed High King Gwydion the destined only weapon that could defeat the Horned King. Though, of course, I helped with those last two. And I suppose the rescue was largely my work, as well. But Taran was very brave, and suffered fearful wounds in the fray, though he was not get full-grown to manhood.”

“The Banner of the White Pig,” Hevydd the Smith added, as heavy-voiced as Eilonwy had been cool and airy, “flew over the Hills of Bran-Galedd when we beat back the deathless army of the Cauldron-Born. Where were you that day, lordling boy? Hiding in your father’s keep? Or were you marshaled then with the legions of Annuvin, as so many fool men seem to have been?”

“Hold, friend Hevydd,” Taran said, reaching out a forestalling hand. “Hevydd speaks from the memory of our shared grief and loss. He is not wrong to defend the honor of the standard we followed through so much, for so dear a final victory. But it is also true that the White Pig might not be the best symbol for our royal house. Hen Wen the oracular pig of Caer Dallben was an important part of my young life, but this device must represent more than myself alone.”

“The House of Llyr used a crescent moon as their device,” Gwythr of Rheged mentioned. “Queen Eilonwy, would you use the moon, the successor to Don’s Golden Sun?”

“That, too, is a sigil of my girlhood and youth,” Eilonwy protested. “My mother’s symbol. I always wore it in remembrance. I would feel strange, seeing the crescent moon of Llyr waving over the towers of Caer Dathyl, and knowing that my ancestors are all still lost, dead and gone. No, we’re going to have to come up with something else.”

“We might combine the king’s connection with Don and the queen’s with Llyr, and have an emblem of a combinate sun and moon,” Enid suggested.

Thoughtfully, Taran offered, “In my youth, I held for a time in my possession a treasure of the bards, one that was marked with a simple but powerful bardic sigil. Three lines, each of equal length, arranged together in a shape like an arrowhead. It was given me by Adaon Son of Taliesin, and King Fflewddur Fflam later told me that the lines stood for truth, knowledge, and love. These, I think, are the ideals that should guide our kingship. Would they not be fitting icons for our flag?”

“What if you used three lines, but arranged them in a row, and let them all represent a source of your knowledge and strength?” the soft-voiced steward of Caer Dathyl, Huw, suggested. “I have heard much of improvements in planting, forging, and other such arts, brought to our people by your majesties. Let your banner be a grain of wheat, a smith’s hammer, and a weaver’s shuttle, each set like a rod beside the others.”

“I like that,” Eilonwy said. “That flag, I think we could live under.”

“Will you sketch the design for me, lady?” asked Dwyvach Weaver-Woman. “Then we may begin crafting your flags, and banners with your device to bedeck these halls.”

“Maybe Taran should, instead,” Eilonwy demurred. “He has more experience than I do with designs for weaving. My embroidery projects always turned out badly until I pared down my ideas – and after several failures!”

“I would be happy to work again with your looms,” Taran assented. “I remember, too, the importance of finding the right pattern, before beginning the weaver’s work. Once, I unraveled weeks’ worth of toil under your watchful eyes.”

“So you did indeed,” the old woman cackled, “but gained an important lesson in so doing. Well may you take a shuttle of good wool as part of your banner, Taran King. Come to my workrooms whenever you will, and my women will gladly receive you.”

“I shall,” Taran promised with a flashing smile. “You’ve done miracles here, my friend. Take care, you’re raising my expectations higher and higher!”

Dwyvach waved a dismissive hand, but smiled back at him indulgently, a strict teacher with a favorite student.

When Taran tumbled into bed beside her later that night, warm and amorous, Eilonwy felt strangely distant from the entire scene: the luxurious huge bedframe with its feather pillows and brocaded hangings, the dull gleams of regal gold around the room where ornamented wall sconces held burning rushlights, the whisper of fine linens and silks beneath them. And when Taran kissed her, and unbound her hair, and ran his hands over her bared body, she let him, but somehow scarcely seemed to notice. 

She managed to keep making a steady stream of encouraging noises as he touched her, and when he shifted to put his mouth on her sex she was able to find release in untethered fantasy. Still, it seemed very different from the tentative, intimate, joyful, awkward lovemaking they’d shared together in the months of the spring and summer, and she felt the heavy weight of something lost.

*

There was no denying, now, that the season was turning from autumn to winter. The rebuilt halls of Caer Dathyl sheltered more and more visitors to the High King’s court, now that the season was ripe for feasting indoors and waiting for spring with the help of company, music, and wine. Men and women came to see and be seen, flaunt wealth and enact new alliances, all under the cover of Taran’s proffered protection and the High King’s peace.

Eilonwy had but little stomach for any of it.

She had thought that she was only upset, distressed in body and mind by what she’d felt in Achren’s rooms, and still brooding in secret over the books and other papers that she had smuggled so stealthily out of Spiral Castle. Achren’s papers had not yet yielded the key to her own mysterious past, as she had hoped, though they contained tables of herbs and charts of stars’ movements that engrossed the girl’s attention all the same.

But, though Eilonwy’s nausea had finally abated following their return from the ruins, her courses did not come on again in the next weeks. And she was still so very tired, and strangely putting on weight now that the vomiting had stopped. Eventually it became impossible not to understand the truth of the matter – that she must have fallen with child. She was pregnant.

When had it happened? Sometime in the waning summer, on the edges of the Red Fallows, where they had lain together in weary love after honest labors? She hoped so. She didn’t want their baby to have been conceived near Spiral Castle. Since they’d been there, everything seemed to be going wrong.

She wasn’t sure of her own feelings, not at all. Love and protectiveness conflicted with fear and a desire to stay withdrawn. Once again, she seemed to find herself thrown into the wild currents of a tossing sea, borne along by a destiny beyond her control.

She ought to have told Taran, as soon as she started to suspect what was happening to her. But she found herself loath to do so, for reasons she couldn’t seem to understand. She tried to puzzle them out, as she sat doodling with an idle finger along the margins of an index of Achren’s herbal poisons in the privacy of her refuge in the solar.

Hadn’t she thought about children, when she’d agreed to marry Taran? Yes, of course, but … but somehow she hadn’t thought it would happen when she still felt so unready. Surely, they had to be more married then they were yet, for such a thing to start. But no, she knew that all it took was a single act of love, correctly timed, to catch a pregnancy, and they had made love many times now since they had plighted their troth before Caer Dallben.

She wanted no children but his. Yet, she hadn’t wanted it to begin like this. Her new family with Taran was supposed to be different, not like life with Achren, where things happened to you whether you liked it or not. 

She was supposed to be in some control. Hadn’t she fought her way to a free adulthood for just that power, giving up all other enchantments for the chance to keep her head?

*

Taran had only meant to spend a day or so with Dwyvach to design the symbol of his house. He found that he returned, afternoon after afternoon, to the long, warm room where the spinners and weavers toiled. His fingers grew stained with dye, his hands softened with lanolin from soft spindles of fine-spun wool.

It would have been customary, he learned through the weaving-women’s chatter, for their work to have been supervised by the Queen, and conducted in her solar. But long it had been since a queen had headed Caer Dathyl’s domestics, and with Dwyvach at the head of the current operation, there was little longing for royal commandment among them. 

Which, Taran supposed, was just as well, as Eilonwy seemed equally disinclined to take the place at the head of their circle.

Himself, he was happy just to sit by their feet, and listen to their talk, and feel the texture of the threads against his palms, and watch the cloth grow on the looms, the embroidered flowers wind down the fine robes. Perhaps it was an odd place for a King – but it suited him. 

He’d been reared in an enchanter’s hut as a farm boy, she held hostage by a madwoman with then-unbroken dreams of domination. On Mona, he’d seen how Rhun had been prepared to take up his kingly role for a lifetime, and still needed more to find his inner authority. Was it such a surprise, that he and Eilonwy weren’t like the kings and queens that had come before them?

*

He found his Queen up in the solar where the pale winter light was dappled by the minute shadows of the falling snow. Due to the long expanses of single-paned, thin-blown glass that edged it, the room was cold. Taran could see his breath rising before him in the air.

She was sitting with her back against the glass, and her nimble fingers were busy tying great bundles of bitter-smelling plants up with red twine. He trod quietly as he entered the room. Still she looked up instantly, her pale blue eyes locked to track him. 

She didn’t speak, and for a moment he stood there in the doorway, in silence. By all rights the moment should have been awkward, the silence strained. But instead, even though he had no idea what Eilonwy was about, even though he mistrusted the coolness of her blue eyes, he still felt more at rest, more simply himself, than he had done all day. 

Maybe, Taran reflected wryly, there was some good in being joined in marriage to a girl who’d seen you make a complete and utter fool of yourself, over and over again, in the course of your years together. With Eilonwy, he could be inexperienced, unsure. She would expect nothing else from him, after all the misdeeds she’d witnessed. It still brought a blush to his cheeks when he thought of the things she’d seen him do and say – and not do. Ellidyr, Achren, Glew – and also Coll, and Rhun, and Adaon – the litany of his failures was a long one.

At last, Taran spoke, his voice falling to the dusty, silent floor. “I don’t recognize those herbs,” he said.

Coldly, Eilonwy snipped back, “That’s why no one ever bestowed upon you the title of Assistant Garden-Keeper, though you’ve managed to gain so many other honorifics.”

He didn’t rise to her barb. “All right, then, tell me about them.” 

She colored up and replied, almost petulantly, “They’re just herbs for the kitchen, drying for winter. Go and find a schoolmaster, if you’re so keen on lessons.” 

She tossed her bright head, and Taran turned and left the solar. He knew, after that display of her increasingly-short temper, that he’d not get civil words out of her for some time, and he saw no pressing need to get his ears clouted meanwhile. She didn’t say anything to call him back.

Taran would have thought no more of it, if he hadn’t been suddenly wakened in the middle of the night, three days afterwards, by Eilonwy’s chilled body slipping under the coverlet beside him. She’d been out of their bed. 

The careful time-sense that Gwydion had taught him as a boy told him that it was just after midnight, and he clearly remembered Eilonwy’s breath deepening into sleep beside him when they’d retired just after evenfall. For some reason, she’d woken up in the dark hours of the night and secretly slipped away.

Silently he wavered – should he ask her? Tell her that she’d woken him? Seek to discover where she’d been? His heart turned over in the dark. He feared that she’d been lying to him, and he didn’t think that she’d ever done so before. Taran was mortally afraid that if he confronted her in that breathless stillness, he’d lose her completely to her anger.

He didn’t open his eyes, but fell backwards again into sleep without a sign of awareness, feeling like a coward, and failure, and a fool.


	13. Chapter 13

The gossip was abroad in the halls of Caer Dathyl: “... hear that the High Queen is expecting? I’m all aflutter. Think of the festivities we’ll have to plan! In the spring, she said, the blessed event is to be. An heir for the High King! How long it has been, since such a thing has been seen in these old stone walls!”

That, of her secrets, Eilonwy had been unable to continue to conceal. The reality of her condition was written on her body. You only had to look at her to know what had happened. Even Taran wasn’t as dense and unobservant as that! And they both had all those years under Coll’s tutelage on the farm, to know how such matters came about. Impossible, at a certain point, not to put two and two together, and come up with a result of three.

Taran had been terrified, then excited, then terrified again, switching back and forth with a rapidity that frankly wearied the gestating girl. She had precious energy left to spare, she was discovering, as their baby, still so small in her womb, had proved every bit as pushy as its father, and just as inclined to trample on its mother’s peace.

She’d heard no reproaches from Taran for not sharing her guess sooner – but perhaps he thought that she’d realized when he did, and not before. She hadn’t enlightened him, counting herself fortunate in that one thing, at least.

And then there were her other secrets, darker secrets, the ones that she had still been successful in maintaining. She’d sorted through nearly all of Achren’s collected papers, books, and documents now, dividing the material into the rough groupings of horrid spells that she couldn’t use, interesting arcana that she could, and hints of the past that she hoped might lead her to more personal answers.

Tantalizingly, she’d found a book, late one night, that seemed familiar to her in size and shape – so familiar that it had made her breath catch in her throat. A small, well-bound, blank volume, it appeared to be; and, as with the book of spells that she’d let burn with the wreck of Caer Colur, bringing her bauble close, when she could manage to get it lit, revealed words in the ancient script of Llyr. 

Reading it was taking longer than she might wish, as she could only get the bauble to work for her in fits and starts, and she had to puzzle out the unfamiliar words one at a time. Still, the more frustrated she got, the more the bauble sputtered and sparked or remained dark altogether. She got on best when she was focused, centered, content, unhurried. Her condition gave her a good excuse to retire frequently, and she put her time to good use. 

It was not a book of spells, as she was starting to realize, but a history, a history of the Queens of Llyr, her ancestresses all. The words were archaic, dry, unevocative; reports of what this queen had done, what that queen had achieved, lists of the lineage of each ruling lady and her consort, and the deeds of their sons and daughters, and the records of their deaths, each in turn. But, put all together, it gave Eilonwy the most extraordinary sense of the earthly time of her history, one life bound unto another, again and again, through generations of human life. And all of that came to its newest verse in her, and Taran, and in their baby, who was even pulling the energy out of her bones and making her silly and weepy and emotional.

She’d asked the women who served as midwives in Caer Dathyl about the baby draining at her, but she didn’t think she’d been understood. The head of them all, a nursy older woman of the type Eilonwy never could get on with, had taken charge of the young Queen’s pregnancy, and it was all Eilonwy could do to hold out against her insistent bossing. And really, all she wanted was for the wretched feeling to go away, and to be left alone to her work.

*

… “a pig-boy’s spawn, to hold dominion over us all, born to the throne like some sort of princeling? I’m surprised at you, that you would consider bearing such an insult.”

“He has the consent of the House of Don. Isn’t that enough?”

“I should hardly think so. Gwydion of Don chooses a beggar-boy to sit on the High King’s throne, before he buggers off to who-knows-where. Does that mean we must let the lout remain there, parading about with his borrowed plumage, and see his brat born to kingship as a given right?”

“The others follow him willingly enough. He gives friendship for friendship, loyalty for loyalty.”

“Well, I am not like the others. If I must, I shall go my own way. I want nothing of the pig-boy’s friendship. I would see, rather, a cleansing of this kingly house, so that the muck of swine may be washed away.”

“Do so, then. I won’t speak abroad against you, but I’ve no wish to get my hands wet in this matter. I don’t want anything to be traced back to me. I’ve got problems enough at home!”

“No one need ever know of the things we’ve discussed. Need they even know we’ve spoken?”

“I see no reason why that should be the case.”

“Good. We understand each other well. Watch for me, and I won’t forget you. The pig-keeper isn’t the only one who can return loyalty for loyalty.”

Could it ever be said, in answer: what loyalty has a turncoat to offer? What friendship a snake, destined by its nature to strike? But, then again, what good may it do, to refuse the offer of a villain? Better to wait and watch, and play the gambit as best can be done, and still keep the chance of coming out on top when all’s said and done.

*

At Midwinter, the High King’s court at Caer Dathyl became a place of joyous celebration. Broad and beefy King Smoit had brought a brace of slaughtered oxen to grace the great hearth and feed the crowd; Llassar, skinnier than ever, had shown up waving a sheaf of papers that explained a process by which, through secrets of molding and casting, would allow one design to produce many copies of a nearly identical object, such as a bowl or haft.

Again, Eilonwy noted with an internal smile, bonfires and wine seemed to play a large role in the festivities. She herself abstained from strong drink, and went in early in the evenings, as her pregnancy continued to drag on her energy. 

She was frustrated with the paradoxical way that she kept gaining flesh, getting rounded in places where she had always been knife-sharp and angular. She tried to eat lightly, but by the end of each day would have given in to the baby’s appetite at least once or twice, despite her best efforts.

If she had thought that pregnancy would have given her an excuse to have done with queenly finery, she’d been quite wrong. No, if anything, the ladies of the court seemed even more insistent on decking her out in finery and furbelows. She felt like a prize pig, propped up for inspection and praising, there in her place at the high table. The baby kept wanting to sleep when everyone was active, and play when she needed to rest. It was all extremely tiresome.

As the holiday approached nearer, Taran and Eilonwy were surprised, but happy, to welcome Gwenlliant’s mother Goewin, who had made the trek with her oldest son to see her little girl in the High King’s castle. Gwenlliant, who had shot up like a weed and become a knowledgeable and shrewd manager under Dwyvach’s tutelage, beamed like a small sun at the unexpected reunion.

“Tell me,” Eilonwy said, as the excited family greetings wore down, “how do things get on at Caer Dallben? And how are Hen Wen, and her piglets?”

“Well, and thriving,” Goewin said. “The children have made friends of the pigs, or the pigs of the children – at this point, I fear I couldn’t tell which was which. We owe you a great debt of gratitude, your majesties. And for keeping my Gwenlliant so well, and so big and bonny she’s grown!”

Smiling, the farmwife went on, “It looks to be you’ll be adding to your own brood, come the spring. Blessings on you, Queen, and on your baby. My Llonio and I had so many, the one after the other, and though sometimes it was a mystery as to how we’d manage, they were all so sweet, as babies and then after, that I never could find it in my heart to have regrets. No, now I’m glad of them – for, if I didn’t have my lads and lasses, what would I have left of my husband? And, thanks to you and your lord, we have room and food and cloth and beds enough for every lad jack of us. Fate turns you over and over on its wheel, but it can be good, in ways you never expected or looked out for.”

“Your blessing is gift enough for any king,” Taran said, his voice hoarse with emotion as he clasped the aging mother’s hand; strands of grey showed through in the dark gold of Goewin’s hand, and beside Eilonwy, resplendent in her queenly expectant young motherhood, Taran thought he’d never seen a lovelier pair of women, each illuminated and glorified by the contrasts between them. 

“And, besides, Gwenlliant has been a treasure,” he added reassuringly, “and a great help, with all her cleverness and spirit. She’s more and more like her father every day, to my joy and hope. We could use more wits like hers, with all the work there is here to be done, and the many tasks that still lie ahead.”


	14. Chapter 14

It did not seem, when the early spring day dawned pale and cold, that it would hold such heartbreak, by its end.

Eilonwy awoke early, the baby a painful pressure on her bladder a prod that levered her up out of bed before she really wanted to rise. Relieved of that discomfort, at least, she tried to settle back down in a position that would support both her swollen belly and her aching back.

On the other side of the bed, Taran remained insensible throughout his wife’s frustrated huffing and puffing. She wanted to suffocate him with his pillow – but only for a moment. 

As he lay there, the gold-pink light of dawn turning his sleeping face back to the innocence of boyhood, he looked awfully dear, and she found her irritability draining away, moment by moment, as the sun came up.

She remembered watching him sleep thus when they’d first met, peeping at a slumbering youth, wrapped in a stranger’s cloak in the shifting shadows of a forest clearing. Had she loved him then? She wasn’t sure. Maybe, already, she’d been starting to. She’d been loving him for such a long time, it was hard to tell when it had first begun. 

Why had it been so easy for her to be angry and secretive with him, of late? She kept turning the question over and over in her head, even after the day broke in earnest, and she and Taran rose and dressed.

They broke their night’s fast and found their seats to hear the day’s petitioners, Eilonwy still feeling unwontedly peaceful and sleepy. Pinned down by her bellyful of ever-growing baby, warmly wrapped in shawls and furs, she was happy, for once, to sit and listen as Taran’s mellow tones alternated with words first distressed, then relieved. 

He was so good at this, she thought, watching him smooth away the troubles and take on the burdens of the people that had come to seek the High King’s redress. How had Dallben known, and Gwydion, and High King Math, that Taran would take so naturally to this great and difficult work? She never could have managed it without him, for all that she was the one, of the two of them, that came from royal birth.

Sometimes, the tasks facing the leaders of these worn and woeful people seemed insurmountable to her. There was just so much needed. They’d been hearing these cases all winter, and the tide of petitioners with urgent concerns was barely stemmed. But Taran remained undaunted, determined, hearing each case one at a time for as many hours each day as he could. 

She should trust him better, Eilonwy thought to herself. Even when he didn’t have all the answers, he was a good listener, and he could almost always help people to think more clearly, and say reassuring things. Even without her letting him into her confidence on so many matters, still he had tried faithfully to support and reassure her, and not gotten angry, called names or yelled or hit or done other unkindly things. Perhaps he’d been prone to saying silly or thoughtless things when they’d been children, but if she was honest with herself she had to admit that he almost never put his foot in it that badly anymore. He didn’t always say exactly the right thing, but he nearly always tried his best.

Eilonwy was pleased when Huw appeared beside the High King’s chair, mentioning in a low voice that food and drink would be well for both their majesties, and did the Queen need a pillow for her back? She did, and the repast he brought them was enjoyed by both. It had been time for a rest.

Weeks ago, Eilonwy had given up on controlling her hunger while the baby had its grip on her, and now she tucked in with a vigor. She caught Taran smiling at her while she ate, and shot a grumpy “harrumph” in his direction. 

“You grow the baby, next time, and we’ll see how you manage,” she growled around a mouthful of roast meat and savory root vegetables. Taran, infuriating man, just shook his head and grinned all the wider.

How could it be that such a peaceful moment, filled with both contentment and the promise of better hopes to come, could give way so rapidly to panic, shouting, cries of distress, shrieks of accusation? But so the wheel of chance often turns.

Spilling red wine like blood as it bounced down the steps of the dais, Taran’s goblet fell from his hand, and he sagged forward in his seat, clutching his chest as though it pained him. “Eilonwy,” he gasped, and then vomited all over both of their shoes, and tilted over into unconsciousness.

It was a struggle for her to make it to her feet and reach him where he had fallen on the shallow stone stairs. Kneeling awkwardly over her husband’s body, Eilonwy reached for him as voices, whose she could not tell, called frantically for help, help, help for the High King! She had to reach around her belly to open his shirt, tilt his head back to give him better access to air, and pull the constricting circlet of gold away from his pain-knit brow. 

She knew the signs, from things she had read in Achren’s books, and before that, from Coll’s good teaching and woodcraft, lessons in recognizing plants that were safe to eat, and in identifying those that, however pretty, could hold death in root and petal.. 

“The High King has been poisoned!” she all but screamed. Stretching backwards with the hand that wasn’t buried in Taran’s hair as if to ward off all the threats of the world, with a deep breath, Eilonwy cried out, “There is some traitor here, who has sought to take the life of the High King!”

She gathered herself as best she could and grasped again for words, for command of herself and the others present. There was no time for dramatics or weeping. Taran needed to be saved. That was the one and only imperative of her being. 

“Bring me charcoal and water, quickly, and I’ll save him from the poison, if it can be done – trust me, I’ve learned about poisons, and I know of what I speak. Quick, hurry, before it’s too late!”

Before she could find friendly hand to help her, another voice rang out: “The Queen! Look to the Queen! She admits it herself that she studies the poisoner’s arts – she was closest to the King, ere he fell. Who should be the traitor, if not her? Clap her in irons. Do not let her escape the King’s justice. She could still be trying to slay him, even now.”

Who was it spoke against her? She could scarcely tell what man’s voice it was that made the accusation. Gwythyr of Rheged? Hevydd the Smith? Taran’s dear and trusted friend, Llassar Son of Drudwas? All her attention had been fixed on Taran, his faltering pulse, the struggling spark of his beloved life; she had no patience to spare for this.

It was as if Taran, in his struggle for air, had taken all of her breath, and the baby’s, too. 

Eilonwy held herself poised there, frozen, bent heavily over Taran’s prone body. Taking in the scene before them – the pregnant High Queen crouched like a she-wolf over the body of the fallen High King where he lay unconscious, fallen to the poison that was, seemingly, second by second, stealing away his young life, and the finger of accusation pointed at the Queen herself – the men and women of the court at Caer Dathyl looked on in astonishment, the full horror of the ghastly situation dawning on each of them in turn. 

“Way!” Someone was shouting. “Way! Coming through!”

Eilonwy was focused solely on the basin and the bin that they had brought her. The girl pushed back her sleeves grimly, unceremoniously dumping the one into the other. 

If the things she’d read in Achren’s books weren’t true, what then? Or, if she’d misunderstood, or been delayed too long?

“We’ve got to get this down him,” she said, her voice steady now, and level, unshaking. “It can counteract the poison, if we can get it into his stomach before the poison leaves it.”

She repositioned Taran, tipping his head back to pour the thick black liquid into his mouth and down his throat. It looked ghastly dripping down his chin and neck, but Eilonwy continued undaunted with the treatment, feeling all the while wretchedly as though she was drowning her oldest friend and the father of her child. There was nothing else she could think of to do.

It was then that she realized that the hands helping her had belonged to the lady of Mawr, tawny-haired Enid.

“Thank you,” she ground out.

“Thank me later,” the other woman replied. “If you’re guilty, I hope you pay for this. The last thing we need in Prydain is more warring, another dead king and another power struggle. I’m not going to sit idly by and let it all fall back to shit, if you’ll excuse my plain speaking.”

“Lady of Mawr,” Eilonwy sighed, “I’ve never managed much of anything else. I’ve kept him alive this far, after all. Let them investigate me, if they must, but don’t let them keep me from his side. I can mend this, Enid, if you’ll only help me.”

“I’m not vouching for her,” Enid said, standing to address the bystanders as well as the crouching Queen. “But I’ll watch you; is that good enough?”

“It will have to be,” Eilonwy said, and turned back to her all-important work.


	15. Chapter 15

Hevydd the Smith it was who lifted the unconscious young High King of Prydain and carried him from the Great Hall. In his hammer-strengthened arms he bore Taran up to the royal bedchamber.

The High Queen Eilonwy came trailing close behind him with her basin and ewer, her hands still dripping with black, wet charcoal.

Some voices the smith heard mutter that the queen should not be allowed to attend on the fallen king, not while she was under suspicion of his poisoning. But none of them seemed to dare to restrain the determined young woman; and as for Hevydd himself, he had no particular reason to distrust her. Nor to trust her, neither.

The commoter was not unaware of the political problem posed in the queen’s figure, namely, that of the child, and theoretical future heir to the kingship, growing in her belly. Still, it loomed less large in the mind of Hevydd the Smith than it did in those of many others. He was a man used to democratic leadership, and cared far less for the principle of heredity than he did for Taran as a fellow and a friend. 

Taran had labored well under Hevydd’s tutelage, and showed the right mettle to grow into a great leader, if he could but live through the scant remaining years of his youth. How the child would grow up, that was a matter that remained to be seen. But Hevydd was not a man to brook the tormenting of a pregnant woman, knowing all too well the toll that carrying a babe could take on a body.

After they laid Taran out, still pale and motionless, in the great royal bed, Hevydd watched as the young queen went back to her activities, plying her patient with the charcoal mixture that she hoped would cleanse or purge him of the unknown poison that threatened his life. 

It didn’t seem to be working. The hours wore on, and still the lad didn’t move or stir. Then, finally, as the sun was going down on the long day, he moaned, and turned, and threw up a mess of dark liquid all over the fine bedclothes.

“Bring me a candle,” the lass commanded. “And a polished dish, or a mirror! His breath is so slight … ”

As obedient hands sought out these things, Hevydd heard her mutter, “It’s his heart, I think. Not good.”

Taran continued to rouse somewhat, though it was clear to the anxious watchers that the High King was not fully aware of himself and his surroundings. He started murmuring in his wife’s arms about how, apparently, he was seeing purple. And, he complained, his chest hurt. She ought not to have let Islimach kick him when he was down.

Hevydd heard the dragging lassitude that weighed down his one-time student’s tongue, and worried that it boded ill for the lad’s life. There was no certain way of knowing, it seemed to him, that the poisoner had yet failed in their eventual aim. Whoever he – or she – might be.

The master-smith noted that the lady Enid of Mawr, alone, had remained in the room with them at all times. Under suspicion herself for the young king’s apparent poisoning, Queen Eilonwy seemingly needed a chaperone. As she watched Taran, Enid watched her, with what suspicions none could tell. And still the hours crept on.

Eilonwy was exhausted, uncomfortable, nearly at the end of her resources. Her clothes were soiled, crumpled, smelling of sweat and sickness and fear. The baby was awake, and moving about with increasing intensity. Did it know, there where it was growing, about the terrible risks of the outside world? Perhaps it did; perhaps her baby could feel her terror, vibrating through her skin and bones. 

While she hadn’t been paying close enough attention, some enemy had snuck through their defenses to strike at this, the heart of the realm. 

Taran’s face was sweat-covered, and the beard was starting to come in on his cheeks and chin, giving him a raffish, untidy look. If he died of this, oh, she would be lost, she knew it. They would all be lost.

Poor baby, to be born to such a plight. The child hadn’t asked for any of this. But then, the once-Princess of Llyr reflected to herself, few such children did. Certainly she hadn’t, when she had been born to exile and apparent ruin.

She had no intention of letting that happen. Hadn’t she fought her way through every trial that had ever beset her, survived the years in Spiral Castle and the hen-flock on Mona and the deathless swords of Annuvin, defeated Dorath, cast down her tormentor in Caer Colur, led wolves in battle? Was she going to be defeated by this?

“No,” she murmured, reaching out to grasp Taran’s hand as the fear struck anew to the core of her.

She could be, she knew, if she didn’t manage to gather some allies, and quickly. People who she could trust to be loyal to Taran, and to believe in her innocence. The girl frowned as she realized that more would be found for the former end, than for the latter. Eilonwy had too few dear friends among their court.

It was her own fault, she knew. She’d never found making friends easy, save the few fellow-strugglers that she connected with right away.

She wished she had Fflewddur back, to help her. Or Coll. Or even that King Smoit had not returned to his cantrev, and could sit this awful vigil with her.

She’d left her bauble at her work table, and she missed the smooth touch of the sphere dearly as she waited in her solitary watch. Even if it like enough would refuse to light much.

Her hands itched to get at her papers, where she might be able to learn more of what troubled Taran. But she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight, and who could she tell, with the shadow of doubt that now hung over her, to bring her the references on herbs and poisons that she had hidden away in her secret chamber? 

The girl snorted at the idea. They’d cast her out for a witch, for sure, if she did that.

*

Meanwhile, others in Caer Dathyl went about discovering what they could. 

Kai Son of Keredwic, the castle steward, horrified that such a thing should have come to pass on his watch, lost no time preserving the dried wine in the fallen goblet, questioning the cooks and the serving-lads who had brought the king food and drink, and searching out what might be known about the poisonous herbs growing in Caer Dathyl’s still-cold late winter. 

The kindly steward did not have the heart to bat away the little girl Gwenlliant, who had stuck as close to him as a burr since the king’s fall, when her eyes had gone wide and her cheeks pale. Better to have her nimble mind occupied, the man thought, than to let her alone to fret and imagine up worser horrors.

None seemed to know what voice it was had accused the queen. Yet, all who had heard the rumor found reason to at least question the possibility. Could the queen have done it? She was reputed to be a descendant of the old sea-enchantresses, and some whispered that she had been raised by witches. Might she not prove to be one, herself? 

Who knew of her kin? She spoke little with so many of them, the men and women of the court. She had always seemed to hold herself apart.

Gwythyr of Rheged was among the most tenacious of the seekers after the truth of what had happened to the young king. He had not been a close ally of the House of Don, nor had the other nobles of the cantrevs around Rheged, and so an uncareful observer might have been surprised at Gwythyr’s vehemence in pursuit of justice for Don’s chosen successor. But Gwythyr had come of age in a world riven by war and woe, and understood all too well what would become of even the nobles in a land ruled only by chaos. 

Gwydion of Don had chosen one of his warriors to rule after his departure, and Gwythyr mistrusted that any other ruler would be able to hold on to the throne of the High King with any more success. Like Enid of Mawr, he had no desire to live through another long period of tumult, while lord strove against lord for the mastery. And he feared lest such underhanded means as poisoning should become an open path to the seizure of power.

But Llassar Son of Drudwas it was alone who, driven by the deep love in his heart, dared to break into the high queen’s sanctum in search of the truth. Llassar, who feared for his dear Taran Wanderer, and grieved at the thought that the queen might have been the one who turned against him. 

She had not been his comrade as Taran King had been in the before-times of the war, but he had never thought that she might turn on them with murderous intent.

The former shepherd was dismayed when he looked around the cold, bright room, and saw bundles of drying herbs, harmful or healing he knew not, and a great pile of black-bound books and spidery-written loose pages, and what appeared to be other objects of enchantment, stones and bones and feathers and a pale orb like a lightless star.

He quailed to see so many seemingly suspicious things in such a place, not wanting to think the worst of his friend’s wife. And yet, it pleased him, as well, to have the trove of evidence so readily to hand. Well he knew the real use and value of such a record.

He swept the lot of it up into a bundle, and left the queen’s solar behind.


End file.
